Legal Considerations
Living Wills & Health Care Proxies
Each of us has the ability to guide our healthcare providers and loved ones in making medical decisions on our behalf. Advance directives give you the ability to document the types of healthcare you do and do not want, and to name an “agent” to speak for you if you cannot speak for yourself. By planning ahead, you get the medical care you want, avoid unnecessary suffering, and relieve caregivers of decision-making burdens during moments of crisis or grief.
- A healthcare proxy, or durable power of attorney for health care, allows you to designate another person as your agent to make healthcare decisions on your behalf when you can’t do so yourself.
- Living wills and other advance directives are written, legal instructions regarding your preferences for medical care if you are unable to make these decisions. Advance directives guide choices for doctors and caregivers if you are terminally ill, seriously injured, in a coma, in the late stages of dementia, or near the end of life.
Powers of Attorney vs Guardianship
A power of attorney and guardianship are tools that help someone act on your behalf if you are unable to make decisions yourself.
- A power of attorney is an estate planning document that allows a person you appoint to act in place of you for financial purposes when and if you become incapacitated. You may limit a power of attorney to a specific transaction or grant full power over all of your affairs.
- Without this document, a court will appoint a guardian to make these decisions.
Wills & Trusts
Everyone should have a will. While property such as life insurance proceeds will pass directly to a beneficiary without a will, you must designate where the majority of your processions should go or the state will decide for you. Typically, your parents and siblings are next in the order of inheritance, followed by aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. In some states, your parents may be entitled to share your estate with your surviving spouse if you have no living children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. Unmarried partners, friends, and charities get nothing.
Trusts are established to provide legal protection for the trustor’s assets, to make sure those assets are distributed according to the wishes of the trustor, and to save time, reduce paperwork and, in some cases, avoid or reduce inheritance or estate taxes. They are also used if you want to pass on assets to minor children when they reach the age of majority, to shield or reduce certain properties from taxation, and to reduce paperwork.