Planning For Financial Management

If you do nothing, and are unale to manage your affairs, someone will need to petition the court to become your guardian. This is an invasive and intrusive method of handling your affairs and requires significant cost and delay. Among other things, it requires a finding that you are incompetent or incapacitated and a physician's examination. Your guardian must be bonded. Periodic accountings must be filed with the court. Your affairs become public. The legal fees in a guardianship can be enormous.

An inexpensive, private, easy alternative to guardianship is to execute a general durable power of attorney. The document must be executed while you are still competent and will continue in effect after you become unable to manage your own affairs. In the power of attorney, you name an agent who is granted the authority to act on your behalf in all matters. The power of attorney may be effective either immediately after you execute it or after you are no longer able to manage your affairs. You should always only grant a power of attorney to someone you completely trust.

Note: a power of attorney which affects real estate must be recordable in the land records. If the real property is located in the District of Columbia , by statute, specific language is required in order for it to be effective.

Planning for Health Care

Most people prefer to make their own decisions rather than have them made for them. This is especially true in the health care area. You frequently read or hear of stories in which a person becomes ill and is not permitted to control health care decisions. Situations abound where:

• The medical establishment moves forward on its own momentum, ignoring your wishes and desires
• Your family makes decisions which are not what you want
• The family members who are making decisions are not those you want to be making them.

To avoid these problems to the extent possible, there are two primary types of documents:

1. A Living Will; and
2. A Medical or Health Care Power of Attorney

Both documents are frequently combined in a Medical Advance Directive.

A "Living Will" is a written statement of your wishes regarding the use of particular medical medical treatments you specify. Typically they are limited to decisions about "life-sustaining procedures" in the event of "terminal illness" or if you have an "end stage condition" or are in a "persistent vegetative state." Thus, the Living Will Living usually applies to particular decisions only near the end of your life.

A Health Care Power of Attorney authorizes someone you name to make health care decisions for you in the event you are unable to speak for yourself. A Health Care Powers of Attorney is different from and more flexible than a Living Will because it authorizes someone you name to make health care decisions for you in the event you are unable to speak for yourself and it applies to medical decisions to be made at any time in your life, not only when you are near death. If you wish, it can include specific instructions to your agent about treatments you want done or wish to avoid or any other issues regarding your health care. It can also contain instructions or guidelines you want your agent to follow.

One of the most important functions of an Advance Medical Directive is that by executing them, you are forced to consider difficult decisions but have the advantage of deciding them when you are healthy and feel well.