Attorney Thomas B. Burton discusses the best time to sign a Durable Power of Attorney for Finances and for Health Care, and reviews the reasons why every person should strongly consider having both documents in place.
Transcript of Video: The Best Time to Sign a Durable Power of Attorney
Today I want to talk about the best time
to form and sign a durable power of
attorney for finances or for health care
now both documents recall durable
because they're designed to survive your
incapacity what that means is you need
the document in place in a situation
where you're ever incapacitated and
unable to manage your own health or
financial affairs and there's two types
of power of attorney you need like I
said one is called durable power of
attorney for finances and property and
that gives your agent the person you
named the power to act on your behalf
if you're ever incapacitated or unable
to act in the second type is called a
durable power of attorney for health
care and that's similar to the financial
power except it's naming someone
specifically to act for you and carry
out your wishes and make guidance to
your health care
now in the health care document you're
going to make several choices about your
own care and what your thoughts are
about end-of-life care feeding tubes
resuscitation things like that so you
need to think about you and your values
and what's important to you before you
go ahead and make those choices in the
document and then it's important to
communicate those wishes to the person
you name as agent because if you are
incapacitated for example in a coma you
are going to be unable to communicate
your wishes and you're going to need to
rely on someone you know and trust to
communicate them and make decisions for
you with the healthcare professionals so
with the financial power it's similar
except this is someone who is named as
your agent of fiduciary to take charge
of your financial affairs pay bills
taxes insurance collect money rents and
like I said pay expenses
out of your actual financial accounts during
the period in which incapacitated so a
lot of people think if I form a will or
I'm taking care of because I
named a personal representative in the
will or an executive and while that's
great that does name someone was
authority to take over after your death
there is this big gap where you're still
alive where many people have no
financial power of attorney or
health care power of attorney with an
agent named to act on their behalf and
in my practice recently I've seen
several cases where people call me and
the loved one is already in the hospital
and they want to change beneficiary
designations or try to take action to
getting health for the person and I have
to ask them a lot of questions about
whether the person still has the
capacity to execute a document because
once you're in the hospital there's
going to be lots of questions raised
about whether you have the mental
capacity to know the extent of your
affairs to validly executed finance
of attorney or a health care power of attorney and
in fact the health care power of attorney
says it needs to be witnessed by two
disinterested witnesses and they cannot
be health care providers so based on
these recent situations I wanted to make
this video for clients and encourage you
to put your estate plan together
specifically these documents naming a
financial agent and a health care agent
while you're healthy and there's no
question about your capacity to execute
these documents in my opinion it is much
harder to challenge the capacity of
someone who executed a document when
they did it years before they had any
serious health or mental capacity issues
and when they did it with a qualified
lawyer signing the document in the
lawyer's office with two disinterested
witnesses
so my best advice is to take care of
those documents well in advance of
before you would need them and then they
will provide you peace of mind that if
you ever are in a terrible medical
situation or incapacitated you have
someone a fiduciary named to act on your
behalf and your best wishes so thanks
for watching and we'll see you next time.
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Transcript and captions provided for ease of access for the hearing impaired.
For questions about this topic, or to suggest a topic for a future blog post, please contact my office.