Ed. note: Please welcome Cori A. Robinson to our pages. She will be writing about her experiences as a solo practitioner in the trusts and estates space.
I often tell my clients when drafting their wills that it is my role to help them plan for the “worst case scenario.” Call it thoroughness, prudence, or even neurosis, but I will always play Debby Downer to a client’s Pollyanna. When contemplating your will, you must consider the possibility of catastrophe including but not limited to plane crashes, bitter divorces, and the surprising return of long lost relatives.
Catastrophe, however, need not only apply to death. You must have arrangements in place to provide for you and your family in the event of illness or accident during your lifetime.
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Every individual over the age of 18 should have a power of attorney. A power of attorney is written authorization that appoints an agent to carry out your business, financial, and legal affairs. Similarly, a health care proxy appoints an agent to make medical decisions on your behalf in the event you are unable to express your wishes.
Marriage to a person does not give you automatic authority to access their individual financial accounts. Living with your parents does not give you the right to access their accounts, nor can they access yours. In the event you do not have a power of attorney, your spouse and children are barred access to your individual assets, which they may need to survive. In the event an agent is not appointed, your family may be forced to request court intervention for the appointment of a guardian or conservator, which is an emotionally difficult and expensive process.
A power of attorney grants your agent significant authority to act on your behalf. Obviously, you should choose an agent whom you implicitly trust. Even still, you may wish to limit an agent’s powers to only specific actions or assets (e.g., real estate). In some cases, you may want a power of attorney to become effective only if you are deemed incapacitated at some point in the future. You can specify this condition and name any physicians whom you wish to be involved in your declaration of incapacity.
Often, we focus on estate planning in conjunction with the control and distribution of assets following death. In common law, however, the term “estate” refers to a person’s net worth in life or death. Playing the optimist for just a moment, I encourage you to estate plan for life, to provide for yourself and your loved ones, because you may just survive that plane crash.
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Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at [email protected].