A power of attorney is a document that lets you appoint a person or an organization to handle the financial and medical decisions on your behalf, when you are not able to because of sickness or death. The person or the organization is called the attorney-in-fact or the agent. POA is given to someone whom you can trust with your life.
Turning 65 is a major milestone for many Americans, as it is the traditional age at which they start thinking seriously about retirement.
If someone has lost capacity to execute legal documents and has no power of attorney in place or has a power of attorney that is no longer usable (for example, if the named agents are deceased), a guardianship proceeding may be the only recourse.
We often use the euphemism “getting hit by the bus” to begin the discussion and get our clients thinking about what the reality of that situation would look like, if they were suddenly no longer available.
It should come as no surprise that where we are born, grow, live, work, play, and age can have a dramatic impact on our health.
One of the many documents an elder law and long-term care planning attorney in the Northwest Iowa area will encourage clients to put together is a living will. These documents have been considered incredibly important in both the legal and medical fields for 40+ years. A living will provides you with the opportunity to make your medical wishes known should you become incapacitated and unable to make decisions at the time. [Read More]
If you’re dealing with a nursing home, it will quickly become clear that the options for paying the care bill are dizzying. Paying out of pocket is cost prohibitive. Long-term care insurance is probably not workable. For many, that leaves Medicaid, but those rules are spread over hundreds of pages of federal and state statutes, regulations, and policy manuals. What you need is an oasis from the stress, not the exponentially increasing stress that comes from trying to make sense of all those rules. Don’t despair. You can achieve calm in this whirlwind. Follow these five steps and you’ll soon find that the zen of nursing home planning is easily reached. [Read More]
Now that you’ve earned your college degree, you may not feel like you have anything to “protect” through estate planning. After all, the stereotype of the “starving college student” got started for a reason! But, even if you leave college with a load of student loans and an entry-level job (or hopes of one), you will do yourself a favor by spending just a little time doing some basic estate planning here in Northwest Iowa. [Read More]
Have you been to the doctor? Have you ever taken aspirin or ibuprofen for a headache? Had an out patient procedure? Had a surgery? What led you to take those actions? Did you call the nurse’s station at the local clinic or your health insurance? Did the doctor explain the risks and rewards of the procedure or surgery? Ultimately, you made the decision. But what if you couldn’t speak for yourself? [Read More]
Every family has its own approach when it comes to talking about financial and legal information. However, families who are at the estate planning phase should be having at least some superficial conversations about these topics, as there is significant information which needs to be shared just to make the estate plan work smoothly. [Read More]
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