March 28, 2021
3 Disability Documents That Every Retiree Needs to Have
3 Disability Documents that every Retiree needs to have.
Attorney and Financial Advisor Chris Berry discuss the 3 Disability Documents in this episode of Daily Wisdom.
The 3 Disability Documents are,
1. Financial Power of Attorney.
2. Medical Power of Attorney.
3. Personal Care Plan
Join Atty. Chris and learn what these documents are all about.
Estate Attorney and Advisor Chris Berry of Castle Wealth Group answers questions on retirement and estate planning every Wednesday at 1pm. Register via this link or give our office a call at 844-885-4200.
Castle Wealth Group and Christopher Berry help families with estate planning, elder law, retirement planning, and tax planning from their offices in Brighton, Ann Arbor, Livonia, Bloomfield Hills, and Novi.
Castle Wealth Group helps families with their legal, financial, and tax planning for their retirement and legacy.
With the use of legal structures like revocable living trusts, Castle Trusts (asset protection trusts), Chris Berry and Castle Wealth Group can help your family plan, protect, and preserve what is important through their Retirement and Legacy Blueprint Process.
For more info visit:
https://castlewealthlegal.com/home
https://michiganestateplanning.com/
Episode Transcript
Disability Documents
Hello everyone, this is Chris Berry with Castle Wealth Group. And today, we’re going to talk about the three disability documents that every retiree needs to have. And if you like this information, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you get updated whenever we provide more education like this.
Christopher Berry is a leading estate attorney and advisor in the area of retirement and legacy planning. He has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Kiplinger’s, Crain’s, Detroit and more. He’s the host of the weekly radio show and podcast, The Chris Berry Show. He’s a national thought leader as it relates to retirement and legacy planning and has authored the Amazon best selling book, The Caregiver’s Legal Guide.
So with that, what are the three disability documents? So in terms of retirement and legacy planning, one of the big things is planning for what happens if you pass away, and that’s legacy planning. But the other issue is, what happens if you don’t pass away, you continue to age and you face all the issues that go along with aging. And more specifically, what happens if you were to have a stroke or you were to get a knock on your head and now someone needs to make decisions for you? Well, that’s where these disability documents come into play. And there’s three main disability documents that every retiree should have. And so the first one is what’s called a financial power of attorney, and that’s the document that appoints someone to make financial decisions if you’re unable to. So if you were to get a knock in your head, who’s going to pay your bills?
A lot of times it might be a spouse, first and maybe adult children or some other loved one might be making those decisions for you. But it needs to be in writing, and that’s called a financial power of attorney. Now, the second key document is what’s called a medical power of attorney. In Michigan, we call this a patient advocate designation, and this is a document that appoints someone to make medical decisions if you’re unable to. And included in that document would be what we call living will type language. So you might’ve heard of Terri Schiavo. She was a woman down in Florida. She was in a vegetative state. Her husband wanted to remove her from life support, her family wanted her to remain on life support. And it became a big court battle that lasted over eight years. Well, all of that could have been avoided had Terri Schiavo had this medical power of attorney, or in Michigan we call it a patient advocate designation appointing her spouse to be able to make medical decisions.
Decision Making
Because a lot of people assume that just because I’m married or I have adult aged children that I’m a parent of, I can make medical decisions for these people. But once you turn 18, legally you’re an adult. And likewise, you don’t necessarily have any legal authority to make decisions for a loved one or a spouse. It has to be in writing. And that’s why it’s so important to create these disability documents. And then the third key disability document is what’s called a personal care plan. And this is a document that doesn’t appoint someone to make medical decisions, it gives them instructions on how best to care for you if you were to need long-term care. So if your medical power of attorney appoints someone to make medical decisions and gives instructions with regards to end of life decision-making, your personal care plan document is a document that gives instructions with regards to long-term care.
For example, would you want to be kept at home as long as possible? Would you want to attend religious services? Certain foods you like, certain foods you don’t like, certain music you like to listen to, television programs. Maybe you want to go to church, maybe you want to see your family, maybe you don’t want to see your family. But this personal care plan document, and we have a questionnaire we give our clients to help complete it, really gives instructions on how to navigate that long-term care journey. Because understand, we don’t go from healthy to passing away, a lot of our clients go through this aging process. So the medical power of attorney gives end of life decision-making, the personal care plan gives long-term care decision-making. So what are the three disability documents that you should have? A financial power of attorney, a medical power of attorney and a personal care plan. So hopefully, you found this educational. If you want to be reminded whenever we have more videos coming up, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. This has been Chris Berry with Castle Wealth Group. Thank you.
Castle Wealth Group has clients across the nation and helps them plan, protect and preserve what is important by creating a retirement and legacy blueprint.