Regardless of how large or small your estate is, nothing compares with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that if something were to happen to you, your assets (that you’ve worked your entire life for) will be managed exactly how you want it, without any alterations.
Whether it’s your kids, your spouse, another family member, or even someone else that isn’t blood-related. You want to rest assured knowing your wishes will be executed accordingly.
What is Durable Power of Attorney?
A Durable Power of Attorney is a legal document that grants someone else the authority to make decisions and act on your behalf in financial and legal matters. It is an essential tool in estate planning.
The "durable" aspect means that the Power of Attorney remains valid even if you become incapacitated or unable to make decisions for yourself. This designated person, known as the "attorney-in-fact" or "agent," can handle tasks such as managing your bank accounts, paying bills, signing documents, and making important financial decisions, even managing your business.
It is an important legal tool that allows you to plan for the possibility of needing assistance in managing your affairs in the future.
Why Do You Need a Power of Attorney?
People set up Durable POA (power of attorney) for several reasons. The most common reasons, likely to affect you and your family, we’ve outlined below:
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Managing Finances:
A common reason people set up a Power of Attorney is to ensure their financial affairs are managed effectively and responsibly. By designating a trusted agent, one can delegate tasks such as bill payments, managing investments, and handling business transactions, especially in situations where they are unable to do so themselves due to illness, disability, or absence.
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Making Healthcare Decisions:
In addition to financial affairs, Power of Attorney for healthcare grants the recipient the authority to make medical choices on your behalf. In case of incapacitation or emergencies, this provision is crucial as you cannot express your wishes. It offers peace of mind and ensures your values and preferences are respected.
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Planning for Incapacity:
The power of attorney's capacity to address probable future incapacitation plays a crucial role. By assigning a durable Power of Attorney, you can designate someone to act on your behalf in the event that you become physically or mentally incapable of doing so. This proactive approach eliminates the need for expensive and time-consuming court-appointed guardianship, allowing for smooth decision-making.
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Preventing Family Disputes:
By designating recipients, Power of Attorney can assist in preventing potential disagreements among relatives. you lessen the likelihood of disputes regarding decision-making authority, by explicitly naming a recipient or recipients in legal papers. By setting up a Power of Attorney, as the grantor, you can ensure that choices are made in accordance with your goals and reduce the likelihood of legal problems in the future.
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Long-Term Care Planning:
As we age, we tend to consider long-term care planning, which involves nursing homes, assisted living, or home healthcare. Power of Attorney helps to plan for these scenarios by granting authority to someone you trust enough to make necessary arrangements, manage finances, and handle healthcare-related decisions. By establishing a Power of Attorney early on, you assure yourself of a smooth transition to long-term care and protect your financial interests.
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Ensuring Business Continuity:
If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner it may interest you to set up a Power of Attorney legal document to ensure an uninterrupted operation of your businesses in case of absence or incapacitation. By designating a trusted and capable recipient, you can rest assured that critical business decisions can be made intelligently, and financial matters handled without disruption - giving you a sense of security and confidence in the continued success of your business endeavors.
By clearly granting decision-making authority to trusted and capable individuals, you alleviate potential conflicts, plan for long-term care, ensure business continuity and rest easy knowing your affairs are in good hands.
Do you need a lawyer to get a power of attorney? How much does it cost?
You don’t need a lawyer to give someone Power of Attorney. However, it’s always advisable to consult with one anyway, as estate planning and probate laws are complicated in every state. Further, some counties and cities impose further terms and conditions on Powers of Attorney.
And you might find yourself spending as much as $2500 on attorney fees.
That’s why IronClad Family offers this for FREE to our users.
You get access to our lawyer-approved estate plan wizard. Essentially this holds your hand and guides you step-by-step on how to do a Power of Attorney yourself - with required proxies and witness signatures.
More importantly, our tools are constantly updated on recent policies guiding any state within the US. In other words, you save hours of tedious research on regional policies, while doing your power of attorney.
6 Things to Look for When Choosing a Power of Attorney
Having someone to take care of your financial assets, business matters, and legacy brings immense peace of mind. It's a crucial decision to choose the right person to represent you and manage your assets or hold your power of attorney for healthcare.
We've compiled six traits to help you determine if they're the perfect fit to handle such authority over your affairs. Find that weight lifted off your shoulders by making an informed choice.
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Close Proximity is Key
Think about the location of your prospective power of attorney. How close are they to you, your preferred medical facility, or hospital? Remember that in an emergency, a healthcare proxy or power of attorney may need to travel swiftly to the hospital or care facility.
As a result, picking someone from another state might not be the greatest option. You should try to locate a local person. Consider using someone who lives nearby.
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A Trustworthy Person
It's crucial to think about the person's morals and character while choosing a power of attorney. Consider whether you can trust this person with such a significant obligation. Are they likely to carry out the obligations that come with having power of attorney? Will they abide by your requests?
You're putting your faith in this individual to represent you. Therefore you must choose a person you can depend on and trust. They will be making judgments that will affect your life, and beyond.
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Someone Who is Strong-minded
Being a power of attorney can get complicated really fast. And it’s not always simple, especially when the situation is emotionally charged. Consider your power of attorney's communication style before choosing them.
How assertive or passive are they? Are they able to resist pressure and stand their ground against others? Especially when it comes to managing your estate.
You need to discover someone who, in the face of pressure from friends and family, won't back down when it comes to upholding your wishes. Additionally, the person you choose should be able to speak plainly without hesitation or second-guessing their actions.
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A Person With Knowledge of Medical Procedures
Depending on how you assign these responsibilities, your power of attorney most likely will be charged with making healthcare decisions on your behalf. Therefore, you want to pick (at least for your medical durable power of attorney) a person who has some familiarity with how medical procedures operate.
This does not imply that you must choose a family member as your doctor or nurse. The key takeaway is that you'll need someone who knows how to ask the proper questions, particularly on diagnostic testing, therapeutic interventions, prognosis, and the overall benefit of medical care.
The ideal candidate would be someone who isn't scared to disagree with advice or treatment options that go against your preferences. A medical power of attorney should be someone like this.
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A Person Who Is Eloquent
Does this person have the ability to remain composed under pressure and speak clearly and effectively? Or do they get easily agitated when things become emotional or heated? Would this person be able to express your wishes to your medical team and family members in a clear and efficient manner?
Choose someone with effective communication skills. This calls for careful consideration of the person's speech patterns. Does he or she take a while to make their point? If so, you might want to think twice before choosing him or her. The individual you select must have the ability to make decisions and effectively communicate in difficult medical conditions.
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Willingness to Serve
Keep in mind that acting as a power of attorney may be a rigorous and stressful job, and not everyone can handle the duties involved. Speak with your potential attorney-in-fact before choosing them.
Be sure that they feel they could serve in this capacity. Encourage the person to be honest. The last thing you want is for someone to say yes to being your power of attorney when in reality the role would end up being too overwhelming.
Or worse, hand over such an important responsibility to someone who is lackadaisical.
How to Create a Durable Power of Attorney: To Ensure Security for Your Loved Ones
Depending on who you ask, there are a lot of ways to create a durable power of attorney.
The easiest and most cost-effective way today is with the IronClad Family’s estate plan wizards.
With our easy-to-use template, you can easily create your Will, Power of Attorney, and Health Directives (your Durable Power of Attorney for health care). Completely FREE and lawyer-approved.
How to Revoke or Modify Your Durable Power of Attorney
So what if there’s a falling out? Perhaps you became unsure of their trustworthiness. Or a conflict of interest arises. Or maybe you simply changed your mind and wanted to hand over your legacy to someone else.
It’s best to terminate their authority to act for you.
One of the traditional ways to do this is by using a revocation of power of attorney document to nullify it.
But that requires a lot of work in typing it out. Printing. Making sure it gets to relevant parties and storing it in a safe place - where you’re not guaranteed nobody else can access it. It’s a tedious process.
With the IronClad Family platform, not only can you create your durable power of attorney for free, you don’t need to revoke your recipient’s power of attorney. All you need to do is log on to your account and simply change who receives your assets and the conditions under which they do.
In a matter of minutes, you’re through. With just a few clicks.
This gives you complete control over how you want to pass down your legacy, and who you want making certain decisions for you such as health, finance, etc.
And when It’s all set, and your delivery conditions are met, our automatic delivery system ensures your information gets delivered to your designated recipient(s). We even do reasonable due diligence to physically locate your recipients if their email is not deliverable in the future.
Conclusion
If you’re like the rest of us, you want to enjoy a happy life with your loved ones and avoid getting hung up on the bitter topic of having your family’s case landing in the probate court, power of attorney disputes, people’s opinions on how to divide your assets, who to assign responsibilities to, and so on.
If this sounds like you, I invite you to check out our all-in-one solution for families like yours. Where you can safely store (can never get lost or destroyed), secure in vaults (can never be altered because no one else has access except you), and delivered to your designated recipients according to your wishes, using our automated delivery system. And no one is the wiser.
With the IronClad Family platform, you get to secure all your assets and liabilities safely in your personal government-level encrypted vaults.
And when you’re ready to make that decision of choosing your power of attorney, you have access to our lawyer-approved estate planning wizards for free - saving you $2500 on attorney fees.
Securing and assigning your assets the way you want it has never been easier and more within your control than it is today. With IronClad Family, you can rest assured your wishes are fulfilled to the letter.
To find out more about how IronClad Family is helping families like yours secure their future and prepare a smooth transition and transfer of their legacy, click here.
This article contains general legal information and does not contain legal advice. IronClad Family is not a law firm or a substitute for an attorney or law firm. The law is complex and changes often. For legal advice, please ask a lawyer.