With one telephone call, I was suddenly in charge of both of my parents. My father was the caregiver for my mother, the early stage Alzheimer’s patient, and they lived together in a single family home. I was 1500 miles away when they left home in an ambulance together but was able to provide end-of-life documents quickly to take over decisions.
Health Care Proxy
First, it was essential that both my parents had executed Health Care Proxies. A Health Care Proxy is a document that assigns the power to make health care decisions to another person in the event of illness or incapacity. For each parent, I was named as the second person to be assigned this responsibility. They had each named the other as the first person to take over any health care decisions. I suspect this is fairly common for married couples. Having this document ready to invoke is important in order to handle immediate or emergency decisions. You do not want to be caught miles or hours away without the ability to make critical decisions on treatments, surgeries, or types of care.
Power of Attorney
Second, and probably equally important in the case of a caregiver and/or Alzheimer’s patient, is the execution of the Power of Attorney. The Power of Attorney provides the ability to make financial decisions for an individual. In most cases, this is somewhat detailed as to the specific types of transactions and reach granted to each person named in the document. For example, in addition to paying bills, would you want a designated Power of Attorney to be able to bind an insurance contract on a primary residence? The answer is probably. Again, I was named second on my parents’ Powers of Attorney. This allowed me to walk into their primary bank immediately, gain access and help, and set everything up on online banking. Then I could manage everything from another state.
I would encourage everyone to execute these two documents well in advance of needing them. It’s easy to think you’re too young and healthy. Keep in mind that end-of-life documents can be updated as situations change. Also keep in mind that there are different rules in each state for each document. While hiring an attorney is always an option, there are services and software products that provide a much more cost effective way to create valid documents. Typically these documents must also be notarized in order to be valid and accepted. This assures the document recipient that the grantor of the powers was of sound mind at the time of assigning the authorizations. Consider carrying a scanned copy on a thumb drive or in dropbox.
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