Receiving a health diagnosis or learning that you need to undergo major surgery can cause substantial disruption in your day-to-day life. During this time, the last thing you may want to think about is estate planning.
Proactive planning can help put your mind at ease and let you focus on your treatment. Let’s review your estate plan together to make sure each of the following important components is up to date and reflects your current goals and wishes.
Healthcare documents
Your healthcare documents include your Healthcare Power of Attorney, General Durable Power of Attorney, Living Will, and HIPAA authorization. These documents let you appoint someone to receive information about your medical condition and to even help you make medical decisions if you’re unable to do so.
Financial power of attorney
While a healthcare agent or proxy can make decisions on your behalf in medical scenarios, a financial power of attorney concerns your money, investments, bills, and taxes. Having this document in place can give a trusted person the authority to help you with your finances and property so these issues don’t have to be a distraction while you focus on your health.
Updated trusts
An up-to-date and fully-funded trust lets you focus on your health while your successor trustee handles the affairs of your trust, which could include most, if not all of your assets. If there’s not sufficient time to fully fund a trust, then an up-to-date will can at least put you in control of who receives what upon your death. When time is of the essence, a will may be the only realistic planning tool, but if you already have a trust it can be a relatively easy process to update and fully fund it.
We can discuss the best ways to put these and other estate planning approaches into action for you.