As parents age, there are certain legal and financial matters that their adult children must attend to. They include a Power of Attorney and an Advance Health Care Directive.
It’s a delicate discussion, but when parents are aging, their children should find out if their parents have several basic estate planning documents in place and talk about their final wishes. If they have not done any planning, now is the time—before a crisis occurs.
The Monterey Herald’s recent article, “Financial planning: Making sure Mom is taken care of,” says to first make sure that she has her basic estate planning documents in place. She should have a Will and an Advance Health Care Directive. Talk to an experienced estate planning attorney to make sure these documents fully reflect your mother’s desires. An Advance Health Care Directive lets her name a person to make health care decisions on her behalf, if she becomes incapacitated. This decision-making authority is called a Power of Attorney for Health Care and the person receiving the authority is known as the agent.
Based on the way in which the form is written, the agent can have broad authority, including the ability to consent to or refuse medical treatment, surgical procedures and artificial nutrition or hydration. The form also allows a person to leave instructions for health care, such as whether or not to be resuscitated, have life prolonged artificially, or to receive treatment to alleviate pain, even if it hastens death. To limit these instructions in any specific way, talk to an attorney.
Another option is to create a revocable living trust. In some states, estates worth more than a certain amount are subject to probate—a costly, lengthy and public process. Smaller value estates usually can avoid probate. When calculating the value of an estate, you can exclude several types of assets, including joint tenancy property, property that passes outright to a surviving spouse, assets that pass outside of probate to named beneficiaries (such as pensions, IRAs, and life insurance), multiple party accounts or pay on death (POD) accounts and assets owned in trust, including a revocable living trust. You should also conduct a full inventory of your parent’s accounts, including where they’re held and how they’re titled. Parents may also need to update the named beneficiaries on IRAs, retirement plans and life insurance policies.
Reference: Monterey Herald (March 20, 2019) “Financial planning: Making sure Mom is taken care of”
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