An effective “power of attorney” requires strong (POA) documents. If there comes a time when you or your elder becomes unable to manage your finances or make health-care decisions, having your documents in order will save you a great deal of hassle.
Beware if you rely only on POAs that hospitals provide, or that you have pulled off the Internet, or that you have got from other attorneys who do not focus their practice specifically on elder law.
When an emergency arises, the bank or health-care provider may refuse to allow your agent to act – and then the only recourse is to go to court and get a guardianship.
This is definitely not what you want to hear in an emergency. Guardianship proceedings cost time and money, they expose your private affairs to the public, and you or your elder can lose control of your autonomy. Worst case, unfriendly family members can try to take advantage of a helpless elder, and it can cost tremendous anxiety and expense to defend against that threat.
This is why our POAs for financial and healthcare matters total around fifty pages. We want to help to anticipate as many nuances as possible, to ensure that when you need assistance, your documents will be there to avoid guardianships and to help you get the responsible financial coverage and healthcare treatment you need.
A client came in recently with a healthcare POA from another state. She wanted to know whether it would do the job for her father. We said emphatically “no.”
– The document failed to specify the kind of health care the father would want; and
– It failed to comply with our state law, meaning that it likely wouldn’t work here; and
– It failed to protect the father’s agent from liability for a bad decision; and
– It failed to provide the agent with access to essential medical records; and
– It even failed to designate who should serve as an agent!
Our health-care documents do much, much more than that. And our financial POAs are so meticulous that we’ll cite just one example: We provide over two pages of detail covering real-estate transactions alone.
Check your POAs to see whether they do all of the above – and if not, come see us. We hope you found this article helpful. If you have questions or would like to discuss your legal matters, please do not hesitate to contact our office at 352-432-8859 to schedule a consultation.