The process of estate planning should ideally be viewed from a comprehensive perspective. There are eventualities that you may face before you pass away, and this is something that you should take into consideration, because there are actions that you can take to prepare yourself.
This is certainly not a very pleasant thing to contemplate, but the cold hard reality is that many people become incapacitated and unable to communicate before they pass away. During this interim, there can be medical decisions that must be made. You can account for this through the execution of incapacity planning documents called advance directives for health care.
One advance directive that you should definitely include in your incapacity plan is a living will. Doctors can sometimes use artificial measures to keep people alive indefinitely, even when there is no hope of recovery. Would you want doctors to utilize measures such as these to keep you alive under these circumstances?
When you create a living will, you state your preferences regarding the utilization of measures like feeding tubes and artificial respiration. If you ever become unable to communicate, your own wishes would be honored, and your family would not be placed into a very difficult decision making position.
Health Care Agent
A living will addresses the subject of life-support, but there are other types of medical situations that could be present. To name someone to make these decisions on your behalf in the event of your incapacitation, you can execute an advance health care directive, sometimes called a durable power of attorney for health care or health care proxy.
Financial Matters
Though we are focusing on advance directives for health care in this post, we should also touch upon the financial end of things when it comes to incapacity planning. You can name someone to handle your financial affairs in the event of your incapacitation if you create a durable financial power of attorney.
If you have a living trust, it would also be possible to empower a disability trustee to administer your living trust if you ever become incapacitated at some point in time.
Learn More About Incapacity Planning
We have provided a bit of basic information about incapacity planning and advance directives for health care in this brief blog post. This is a very important subject, and you should be fully informed so that you can make the right preparations for the eventualities that you may face toward the end of your life.
Our firm has prepared an in-depth special report on the subject of incapacity planning, and it will provide you with a great deal of useful information. The report is free, and you can visit this page to get your copy: Free Incapacity Planning Report.
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