Incapacity Planning

Video about a Power of Attorney

Read this article from NAMI with a thorough and straightforward explanation of a Pooled Income Trust. 

Multiple problems frequently arise when an adult loses capacity.  Do you remember Terri Schiavo and the 7 year court battle that her family had to endure to determine the proper course of her medical treatment? Much to the surprise of close relatives, unless certain documents are signed ahead of time, the relatives are not entitled to make health care decisions for their loved one.

The two documents that allow an individual to detail their future medical wishes are a Health Care Proxy and a Living Will.
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Not having a plan in place may create unforeseen problems for your family. Please read my recent article in Epoch Times about the importance of having proper documents.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-good-plan-avoids-big-problems_3066028.

I was recently quoted extensively in a recent  article by Nicole Dieker,  regarding planning for a child with special needs. 
 

https://havenlife.

Medical aid in dying is the process by which an adult, mentally competent, terminally ill patient, whose doctors have determined likely to die within six months, self-consumes prescribed medicines to end suffering and achieve a peaceful death. There are currently legislative efforts in New York State to establish Medical Aid in Dying as a right.

Has it been tried before? Medical Aid in Dying has been legal in both Oregon and Washington for over a decade. Evidence compiled from these two states demonstrates that these programs are overwhelmingly beneficial. There is no evidence of disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations - the majority of patients who choose aid in dying have health insurance and most are college educated.

In New York, the two documents that allow an individual to detail their future medical wishes are a Health Care Proxy and a Living Will. You can also combine the two into one document: in the Health Care Proxy you can both nominate and provide specific instructions to your agent.

Purpose: A Health Care Proxy allows an individual to plan their future medical decisions in the event they are incapacitated. Given the state of today's medicine, individuals are commonly subjected to advanced life support systems and invasive medical treatments that only prolong the end-of-life care. If you have any specific wishes in regards to your end-of-life care (e.

Can one remove the executor or the administrator of the estate? The process is not easy, but it has been done multiple times. Below are several common grounds for removal:

•     Self-dealing. This means that the Executor of the Estate acts in the best interests of himself, instead of the interests of the creditors and the beneficiaries of the estate. It may include purchasing a house owned by the Estate at an artificially low price. Or it may include paying themself a high salary from the estate, without prior court approval.

Most people want to pass down their assets in accordance with their wishes, with minimal costs, minimal delays, and minimal strife amongst the heirs. Yet there are several problems with using traditional Wills to accomplish these goals. These problems include: not having one’s wishes honored because of losing one’s Will; or having your the Will challenged by heirs; not addressing the distribution of all the of your assets because the Will was written years before death and new assets have been acquired; and high costs of lawyers, h costs needed to pay to lawyers, courts, and executors to finalize the Will.

CryptoWills, which use blockchain, may address some of these problems. First, if the data is stored on blockchain, it cannot be lost.
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Once you stop to think about it, you might will realize you have more digital assets than physical ones. These include online banking and brokerage accounts (banking and brokerage), photo storage sites, social media accounts, and cryptocurrency. If you were to die tomorrow, does anyone have the right to possess these accounts? Will they know the necessary steps to access them?

Online providers handle the accounts of deceased users differently. Some, (like Facebook,) have created a legacy contract, which enables one to designate a person to manage one’s account after death. Others do not have such a clear policy, and there are federal laws (such as The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and The Stored Communications Act) that severely limits provider’s’ ability to share personal account information with others.
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