Estate planning isn’t only concerned with what happens after you die—it’s also important to plan for how critical financial or medical decisions will be made if you can’t make them for yourself.
With carefully designed powers of attorney for finances and health care, you can designate a trusted person to make medical and financial decisions on your behalf if you are rendered unconscious or otherwise incapacitated by an illness or injury. Well-crafted powers of attorney can also allow you to provide guidance to your designee in making these decisions—for example, by clarifying your preferences regarding life-sustaining medical procedures.
Making revisions
Although powers of attorney can bring you peace of mind and ensure that your wishes will be followed, you shouldn’t let yourself be lulled into a false sense of security. You’ll still want to periodically revisit these documents and consider executing new ones in light of changing circumstances.
You may need to update your powers of attorney for any of the following reasons:
- Your original designee has died or become otherwise unavailable.
- You no longer feel comfortable with the person you initially designated (if you originally designated your spouse, for instance, but have now divorced.)
- You’ve moved to another state, which means that your powers of attorney may not work in the way you originally intended. States have different procedural requirements and certain terms have different meanings in different states. For instance, some states require that durable powers of attorney be filed with the local county recorder or other government agency.
- Your wishes have changed over time.
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It’s a good idea to execute new powers of attorney every few years even if none of the above circumstances apply. This is because your powers of attorney are only effective if they’re honored—and due to liability concerns, some health care providers and financial institutions can be reluctant to honor documents that are more than a few years old.
We’d be happy to give further explanation of how powers of attorney work—or help decide if you need to revise or execute new documents if your estate plan already includes powers of attorney.
Contact us with any questions.