Two Legal Documents Everyone Needs!
There are numerous advantages to estate planning, even though very few Americans actually do it.
Because we at The Care Company are not attorneys and have no legal training, we won’t be delving into actual legal practices or offering any advice or counsel on legal matters here. Our purpose, rather, is to familiarize you with the lay of the legal landscape so that, should you wish to work with your loved one to plan for his estate, you’ll have an idea what’s involved and where to start. For actual legal advice, you should speak with an estate-planning attorney.
So what’s involved?
In order to manage and care for another person’s legal, financial and medical matters, two essential documents must be in place: a Power of Attorney, which comes in several flavors, and a Medical Directive.
It is amazing how many people fail to secure these critical documents, only to discover when they are met with a crisis that they have no control over anything.
We don’t want to scare you, but truthfully, if you don’t have proper legal documents in place, no one is going to talk to you about much of anything regarding your loved one’s legal, financial or medical matters, nor is anyone going to honor your wishes regarding the person for whom you are caring.
So please take the comparatively small amount of time required to get your legal house in order. Do it while the person is still healthy. Put the documents in a safe, secure place with your other most-important papers, and enjoy the comfort of knowing that when something does happen, you’ll be able to step in and get answers and solve problems without getting bogged down in a swamp of bureaucracy.
