Estate planning documents help protect people when they are at their most vulnerable and give individuals control over their legacy. Wills or trusts allow people to distribute their assets to specific beneficiaries.
Advance directives can discuss what medical care an individual wants to receive in an emergency where they cannot speak on their behalf. Some people add powers of attorney to their estate plans. Basic powers of attorney may provide a trusted individual with the necessary legal authority to handle someone’s finances or oversee their medical care when they become incapacitated.
Those with debilitating medical conditions and those preparing for retirement may want to consider drafting durable powers of attorney to ensure they have indefinite protection regardless of how their health might change.
What makes durable powers of attorney different?
Standard powers of attorney can lose their authority in several different circumstances. The incapacitated person might recover, at which point they can resume handling their own financial matters and making their own medical choices. Other times, a person who requires the support of an agent or attorney in fact might eventually die because of their medical challenges. At that point, their testamentary documents have authority and their living documents lose their authority.
Standard powers of attorney can also lose efficacy in scenarios where the principal who drafted the documents becomes permanently incapacitated. Someone struggling with dementia, for example, might never recover to manage their own affairs. Powers of attorney without the necessary language to make them durable documents lose their authority in cases with permanent medical challenges.
However, durable powers of attorney have special language that allows them to retain that crucial legal authority even in scenarios where someone may never be able to speak on their own behalf again. The agent or attorney-in-fact that they name can potentially serve in that role indefinitely. Durable powers of attorney can help protect people from the possibility of a caregiving professional or a family member with questionable intentions pursuing guardianship.
Adding durable powers of attorney to an estate plan can help protect a testator in an assortment of different complicated scenarios. People worried about the possibility of permanent incapacitation and guardianship may want to expand an existing estate plan or may finally decide to create documents to protect them as their health evolves.
