Estate Planning in a Time of Covid
The first in a series of "How To..." articles to help you create the right estate plan for you and your loved ones.
While people overwhelmingly say family is their first priority, estate planning often remains left to chance. Unlike litigation or papering a business contract, estate planning is the one time people see an attorney without a specific deadline, often delaying until too late. Covid has been a wake-up call to many people. When we can no longer chance everyday life or expect our elders to linger for many years, setting up the right estate plan to ensure our loved ones thrive through crises becomes essential for peace of mind.
How can you get started?
Estate planning documents can be divided into two categories:
Documents that help while you are still alive, and
Documents that help after your death.
While you are still alive, but unable to make decisions for yourself (in legal parlance, when you have lost legal capacity), the following documents will enable your loved ones to help you:
Power of Attorney,
Nomination of Conservator,
HIPAA Release, and
Advance Healthcare Directive.
Additionally, the following documents can also help your family once you are gone:
Nomination of Guardian for Minor Children; and
Living Trust.
Lastly, a Will helps your family only after you are gone. It has no legal effect while you are still alive.
Each of these documents addresses a different function or person. Whereas a Power of Attorney enables someone to pay your bills or deal with your bank, an Advance Healthcare Directive empowers a friend or family member to instruct your doctor when you cannot speak for yourself. While everyone over age 18 needs a Will, you might choose to forego a Living Trust in favor of other probate-avoiding techniques.
Whatever the specific challenge your family faces - the blended family, the special needs child, the senior in decline or the cancer diagnosis – these basic documents are helpful in tackling the whole range of domestic situations.
You can think of estate planning as similar to preparing for natural emergencies. Just as FEMA has universal recommendations for keeping a flashlight, three days of water per person and an aluminum blanket to tackle emergencies ranging from earthquakes to flooding to forest fires, so the same estate planning documents can help your family along its unique path. This same set of documents can help in apparently unrelated situations, ranging from a young adult suffering severe injuries in a car accident to a senior being diagnosed with dementia.
Busy Wills, Inc.’s California Estate Planning newsletter will explain each of these documents, so that whether you hire an attorney or use an online estate planning service, you can approach the process as an informed consumer. Read future editions to explore how to enable your loved ones to thrive through the Covid crisis and beyond.
To find out more about Busy Wills, Inc., please visit: busywills.com.
Attorney Elizabeth Botsford can be contacted at: elizabeth@busywills.com.