Planning for Disability
The planning tools described here are recommended to help achieve peace of mind in the event of disability or incapacity and are especially useful when a person is single or in a non-recognized relationship, including same sex or unmarried couples.
Revocable Living Trust
A Revocable Trust, otherwise known as a Living Trust, can provide peace of mind by ensuring that you will be assisted when necessary should you become disabled. The funded living trust can be a trust where you handle your funds as if the trust did not exist, or a trust where someone other than you is named as trustee in order to provide expert management advice.
Durable General Power of Attorney
You appoint someone you TRUST to make financial and personal decisions for you when you are incapacitated. However, if you do not have someone whom you would TRUST as your agent, then a funded living trust, perhaps naming a bank or management company, would be more useful.
Designation of Health Care Surrogate
This document provides for the appointment of someone who can act on your behalf to make health care decisions, to provide informed consent for health care, to be provided access to your medical records, to apply for benefits, and to authorize your admission or transfer to or from a health care facility.
Living Will
A living will is a document that authorizes the discontinuance of life-sustaining procedures for you when you are terminally ill or in a persistant vegetative state. The purpose of the Living Will is to permit you, when you are healthy, to decide against the use of procedures at some later date. In the absence of a Living Will, doctors may be reluctant, without authorization, to withhold treatment that does nothing more than keep you alive even though you have no chance of recovery. Procedures used for pain and comfort would not be withheld.
Preneed Guardian
The purpose of a preneed guardian is to avoid formal court guardianship procedures which can be time consuming and expensive. It is also useful to avoid conflicts that often arise when someone suffers incapacity.