Episode 43: Healthcare Power of Attorney Part II

Welcome to this week’s Wisdom and Wealth Podcast. This week is episode 2 of our four part series with Sarah Duey, JD, CTFA, CAPⓇ, AEPⓇand Tom Fridrich, JD, CLU, ChFC on Healthcare Powers of Attorney. In today’s discussion Sarah and Tom walk through how this process works in practice, Who should have copies of our HC POA, How to handle traveling with someone other than your agent, How to handle vacationing in other states and overseas and more. 

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JOSH KLOOZ, CFP®, MBA
WEALTH ADVISOR

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Transcript

Joshua Klooz  0:00  
Welcome to the wisdom and wealth podcast. I'm your host, Josh Klooz. Each week, I'll be leading a series of conversations with our team here at Carson wealth, which are designed to equip our listeners with the helpful insights necessary to simplify the critical decision points of life. We believe that true wealth is the thing Money cannot buy, and death cannot take away. Furthermore, we also believe our calling is to enable others to fulfill their own. And to that end, we end up

welcome in again to part two of my conversation with Sara Dewey, from our Trust Services team in Omaha. And Tom Frederick from our Advanced Solutions team in Omaha on health care powers of attorney. In today's conversation, you're going to join us as we walk through how this process really works in practice, who should have copies of your healthcare power of attorney, and also how to handle traveling with someone that's not your agent. Additionally, we're going to talk about how to handle the situation where you're vacationing in other States and overseas, and much more. Welcome back in

Unknown Speaker  1:09  
kind of shifting

Joshua Klooz  1:09  
gears here a little bit. How does this all work in in practice? You know, we get this drafted. And we've got the plan in place. Now what what are some best practices from from your perspective?

Sarah Duey  1:28  
Well, to reiterate what we were talking about earlier, it's good to talk to your agent, your family, if you'd like to share, you know, beyond just the agent, why you chose that agent and who the backup is. And then you're going to want to give them copies, give the agent copies, give the backup agent copies. And then also, as you go in for your annual annual physical, you know, take or sooner, take copies to your primary doctor. And if you are seeing a specialist, you want to make sure that you give them to your specialist of your senior specialists on a regular basis. And then if I'm not mistaken, a lot of the hospitals scan those in. And so sometimes the systems talk to each other, and it's going to be in there. But if there's a risk, that, you know, maybe you're going to be at a different hospital, maybe you've moved or something, you might want to take it to the hospital as well. And just make sure that they can get a copy on file. The other best practice I should mention is that I think it's a good idea to put all of your estate planning documents in a sort of a manila folder. And then on the outside of the manila folder, you're going to write what your medications are currently, who your doctors are, who the contact people are, beyond just your agents and your agents, put everything you can on a sort of grab and go envelope. So that should something happen. Somebody can grab it, and then tell your agent where it is. So put it in a safe place. But then say this is how you access it. This is where it is if I'm in an accident, and you need to come grab it, here's where everything is. That's that's

Joshua Klooz  3:02  
really helpful. And even thought of that. So we had talked about this in the quote unquote, green room before we went live. But what about if we're traveling domestically, we're at a vacation home or abroad, I'm kind of I'm gonna give this to both of you just get your perspective. You know, we're we so far we talked about being at home and making a plan, if we're in one central location, how do we mitigate risk? How do we ensure that we're still, you know, we have some medium of control, given this planning process when we're away from our home? And Sarah, if you want to dive in first?

Sarah Duey  3:43  
Well, there's so much to think about when you're traveling is probably the last thing you think about is your healthcare prior journey, right? But it's a good idea to think about it. So maybe you stop and say, Well, who did I name as my healthcare power of attorney again? And then is that person going to be with me? You know, making sure maybe you throw in a copy, maybe throw in that grab and go envelope into your suitcase. That's the easy part. But if let's just say your power of attorney is halfway across the country, and you're going, you know, going somewhere on vacation Well, again, make sure they know where it is and make sure they know how to access it so that they can access it if they need to. The question is whether that agent is going to have the ability to fly or travel to the state where your vacation home is to treat you. So if you're doing a vacation often or you purchased another home and another location and that agent is not going to be able to get there then you may want to think about naming a different healthcare power of attorney. The other thing is if you have multiple homes, you might want to talk to your estate planning attorney about executing two healthcare powers of attorney one in each state because each state is going to have different laws address In healthcare power of attorneys, just make sure you are aware of that beyond just the vacation, if you have two homes, Tom, what would you say? I think those all

Tom Fridrich  5:09  
make great sense. And the idea of having multiple ones, if you know that you commonly vacation in another state is probably the best advice, simply because of what you said. And really, it's not going to be too challenging or costly for you to get those documents set up so that you feel like you have your plans in place when you're traveling to your other home on a regular basis. The other thing to remember is that when you have a situation where there's an emergency, and you cannot make decisions for yourself, in those situations, if you don't have an agent named or your healthcare power of attorney is not accessible for some reason, most hospital rooms, ers are going to have their procedures and their policies for treating you in an emergency situation where if there's a life threatening situation, they are going to assume you would get implied consent to this treatment to help keep you alive. And so those types of situations are going to be handled in a way to take care of you. So always kind of keep that in mind as a as a backdrop to the planning that, hey, if Oh, if you left that power of attorney on your counter, you don't have to run back to necessarily to the house and grab it and miss your flight. But, you know, the best strategy, like we were talking about before, the best plan is to have that in advance and have it drafted to cover not only where you live, but if you're vacationing on a regular basis in another state that covers you there as well. Understood.

Joshua Klooz  7:03  
I know traveling abroad can be a bit thorny, but just picking up from what you both have said, having it with you where you're going is a good best practice. Assuming that you're going to be traveling with your healthcare power of attorney, or if you're not. If you're not, if you're if you're not traveling with your agent. What would be some of your thoughts is how to mitigate that. What what would be best practice in that case?

Sarah Duey  7:34  
Well, you might want to consider talking with your estate planning attorney about drafting something sort of a temporary agent or, you know, outlining that I'm going on this trip with these people and I appoint this person, should something happen to me on the trip, the question is going to be whether the hospital in that other country will respect that document. We just don't know that answer until that event happens, God forbid, right. But it's something to have in your back pocket or your agents back pocket and in just tell them what you want. sit them down, you probably won't be doing a living well at that point. But you know, talking to them about it, we'd be free to go on the trip and making sure they're comfortable making those decisions for you.

Joshua Klooz  8:21  
So that I think it's very helpful for you know, when when we're in motion, traveling, Tom, any best practices that you have encountered, for storing this document, whether it be at home or on the go?

Tom Fridrich  8:40  
Yes, I I think you have to treat it like your other important documents that you keep, you need to keep it safe, but accessible. So you know, you don't want to keep it in a place where everyone in the house is going to be able to access it. And maybe accidentally throw it away gets, you know, put in the pile with you know, the junk mail on accident. So definitely, it's not going to be anything that you keep on the counter. And that's pretty obvious. You want it protected from fire and other hazards. So where's that safe place in your house, it's going to be different for everyone. But ideally, it would be in some sort of fireproof safe or box that is really pretty fairly accessible to you and your and your agent. Like Sarah said before, ideally your agent has a copy of it. But if for some reason you haven't provided one to your agent than you would need to communicate to him or her, Hey, here's where my healthcare power of attorney is. And it's in my safe which is in the basement. It's unlocked or if it's locked, here's where the key is. So you have to kind of get into details about that. I would probably want this in a separate safe from my other ones that I feel like need to be locked up I'm just because in emergency, I wouldn't necessarily want somebody having to find the key for it. But again, you want it somewhere safe and accessible, where it's not going to be mixed in with a lot of other documents. So that even if somebody's looking for it, they're not digging through 30 other documents to say, Oh, I found it. Finally, it took me 20 minutes, but I've got it here, because I passed over it six times, because there's so many other things in here, that I just missed it. So I think some sort of separate filing cabinet or box where it's safe and protected, is really going to be ideal for most people. There's

Joshua Klooz  10:41  
so now that we've talked about kind of getting the plan in place. What about if I have to update the medical power of attorney Sarah, you know, what would be your advice? And what would be your your thought in that regard?

Sarah Duey  10:54  
Oh, you mean my 10 year old healthcare power of attorney isn't going to be good enough, Josh. Maybe it might be but as we've said before, on other podcasts and out there me, estate planning is never one and done. Because the laws change in your state where you live and your situation is going to change. And maybe you are now in a different healthcare situation than you were before it and maybe you live somewhere else and your agent isn't around anymore. You really need to be looking at that every three to five years, along with your other estate planning documents just to make sure that the people you appoint as healthcare power of attorney are still in a situation where they can responsibly make decisions on your behalf.

Joshua Klooz  11:44  
Well, that is all for today. We appreciate your time and trust that you are better equipped to steward both your wealth and your financial resources. If you have questions or suggestions for a future topic, please direct those to info Houston at Carson wealth.com Thank you again for joining us today. May you and your family encounter truth, beauty and goodness on the road ahead. 

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