In Light of COVID-19, Make Sure You’ve Done Your Estate Planning Basics

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Hopefully you’ve stocked up on toilet paper and snacks, and are able to ride out the COVID-19 crisis safely at home. There’s a lot of reason to feel hopeful, but preparing for all possibilities has never been more important. With COVID-19 patients being isolated from loved ones, now’s the time to make sure that you and your family have authorized the right people to make decisions on your behalf – and making sure your estate planning documents are in order is one way to maintain some control during these uncertain times. 

Planning Now for COVID-19: How It May Help

The spread of COVID-19 has a lot of people on edge. Medical experts say that people of all ages will get sick. Most of us won’t require hospitalization, but certainly many people will – even some who are relatively young and healthy, and who may not have gotten around to creating certain healthcare and estate planning documents yet.

If you or a loved one does become hospitalized, these documents may give the family access to information about the patient’s status. That’s why now’s a critical time to take care of your healthcare and estate planning basics. Certain documents can give you and your loved ones some control over what happens. Having certain estate planning documents prepared is something your estate planning attorneys will suggest you take care of eventually, anyway.

Plus, there may be other benefits to doing some of these estate planning basics right now, even if no one in your family ends up getting sick. Having truly productive tasks to focus on might be soothing this week. Or, maybe you’ve been putting off dealing with estate planning stuff until things were less crazy with work and family obligations. Once social activities resume, you’re unlikely to have this much unscheduled time on your hands again. Taking care of some estate planning tasks is a good use of some of that time. 

Items for Your To-Do List

Your estate planning attorneys can help you determine the specific tools you should put in place at this time. What you’ll need to do depends largely on what estate planning tasks you’ve already addressed. Keep in mind that if you’re previously established certain key documents, they may require updating.  

• Durable financial power of attorney For anyone who ends up in the hospital, having updated durable powers of attorney could prove incredibly useful. Creating a durable power of attorney lets you authorize someone (called your attorney-in-fact) to make necessary financial decisions on your behalf. A durable power of attorney remains effective even if the principal is mentally incapacitated. In the event that an individual develops a serious case of the virus and is hospitalized for weeks, their named attorney-in-fact would have permission to manage their bills and attend to any pressing financial matters.
• Health care proxy Just as a durable power of attorney lets you appoint someone to make financial decisions for you, a health care proxy allows you to appoint someone (called your agent) to make your medical decisions if necessary. You might sometimes hear people call this document a durable medical power of attorney. For COVID-19 patients whose symptoms develop quickly, there may need to be decisions made quickly too. A designated health care proxy can step right in to speak on what the patient would want.
•   HIPAA release In light of COVID-19, the Department of Health and Human Services has temporarily lifted some HIPAA restrictions around sharing medical information about patients. But on an individual basis, a patient’s medical providers may still want a signed release form before sharing information about the patient’s status with others. Plus, when the HHS’s temporary waiver ends, you may have future occasion to need a HIPAA release.
•   Check your backups Even if you’ve already created these documents, now may be the time to make some key changes. Unfortunately, it’s necessary to consider the possibility that the people you’ve appointed as your attorney-in-fact and agent could contract COVID-19 and be sick themselves when you need them. Pull out your planning documents to make sure they’re up-to-date and that you’ve appointed successor agents whenever possible, who can step in on your behalf if your first choices are incapacitated.

Estate Planning for Essential Workers

If you’re an essential worker, you’re probably putting others before yourself now more than ever. However, now is not the time to overlook your own estate planning needs. Thinking about the worst case scenario can be difficult, but it’s important to have these conversations with your loved ones. Discussing your wishes and having your documents in place can help you go to work every day with the peace-of-mind that your preferences are known and your family is taken care of. And estate planning doesn’t have to be cumbersome or tedious. We offer convenient services and will work with your schedule and location. 

Don’t worry about having to figure out what documents you should have and how to create them. Your estate planning team can help you determine what kind of plans you should put in place, and whether you would benefit from other estate planning tools like trusts. And because a lot of these conversations can happen virtually, you may be able to get a lot of estate planning basics done even if you’re quarantined at home.

 How can Ladimer Law help you protect yourself and your family during this crisis? We’re open for business and continue to be available for all your estate planning needs, using Zoom calls and other remote tools. Reach out to Ladimer Law today!