What happens if you get sick or have an accident and lose your mental capacity. Who is going to look after you? Who is going to pay your bills. Who is going to help you with doctors? If you have to go to a nursing home or other care facility what happens to your house?
These are all important questions. And while you are alive and healthy you yourself can answer all of these questions for your future self. You can do this by preparing a power of attorney that kicks into effect only when and if you become mentally incompetent. If something does happen to you and you didn’t prepare a power of attorney things can get very messy and very expensive with lawyers and courts.
But when you do prepare a power of attorney you need to be careful. Essentially you are giving someone else power over your life. By law your attorney must make decisions on your behalf that are in your best interests not their own. But as we know not everybody knows the law or obeys the law. There is always a risk of abuse.
But there are lots of ways to reduce risk. First, pick someone you trust. And better still choose more than one attorney you can pick as many as you want. If you have more than one attorney you can make it that they must always make decisions together or just the important decisions together – this way they can be a check on each other. Other decisions, like paying for the usual repeating bills for example, can be made by either of your attorneys.
And who gets to decide whether you are mentally incapable? Lots of times a spouse or someone close to you might think that you have lost your mind while you feel fine and deny any mental disability. So can they use the power of attorney if they believe that you have become mentally incompetent but you disagree. Depends on how the power of attorney is drafted. I see lots of power of attorney intended to be used if the person loses capacity that can be used at anytime – before incapacity starts. In my opinion this can be very dangerous – I always recommend that the power of attorney be prepared so that it cannot be used unless a neutral third party medical professional assess for incapacity and attaches a report to the power of attorney.
Until next time. Be well.