Episode 44: Healthcare Power of Attorney Part III

Welcome to this week’s Wisdom and Wealth Podcast. This week is our third episode of a four part series with Sarah Duey, JD, CTFA, CAPⓇ, AEPⓇand Tom Fridrich, JD, CLU, ChFC on Health Care Powers of Attorney. In today’s discussion we delve into:

1.      Who in your life needs this process 

2.      How the process changes at various stages of life

3.      What to consider in the event of mental illness or dementia 

Thank you for listening! Please let us know what you think and also pass along any questions you have after listening. 

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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, and again to part three of my conversation with Sarah Dewey, from our Trust Services team in Omaha. And Tom Frederick from our Advanced Solutions team in Omaha, on health care powers of attorney. Join us for today's conversation as we dive into who exactly in your life needs this process, how this process changes at various stages of life, and also what to consider in the event of mental illness or the onset of dementia. Welcome back into our conversation. And so as I think about this, with, you know, the different folks that could be in our audience listening to this, you know, I think about it from Okay, I need to have this conversation with my parents, but I also need to have conversations around my kids and things of that nature. So from the from the kids perspective, or even a grandkids perspective, how old does a child need to be when they get their first healthcare power of attorney?

Tom Fridrich  1:35  
Well, it's nice when the kids are young. And you have to provide consent, it's very easy. I mean, it's, it's not a good situation. But it's at least you know, your role. Here I am, I'm their parents. And I can give that consent, it gets more gray, or it's actually black and white once they reach the age of adulthood. And so in most states, that's age 18. There are a few out there like Nebraska, where it is age 19. So once the child reaches that age of adulthood, where they're treated legally as an adult, even though they may not have all the full adulting skills going on, they have the ability to make their own healthcare decisions on their own behalf. And so if something were to happen to your child who's 18, and they're incapacitated, it's not just assume that you as their parent, have the right to make that decision on their behalf. So ideally, a nice graduation gift or birthday gift at age 18, or 19, is going to be Hey, here, along with the toaster oven for your dorm room, is your healthcare power of attorney. Now, most kids won't, you know, thank you and give you a big hug for it, but because they don't understand how important it is, but it really is something that should be done by parents for their kids who are reaching that age of adulthood.

Joshua Klooz  2:57  
Sounds like a perfect gift to give if you're like a great uncle with a quirky sense of humor at graduation. So, I did think of this as you were you're speaking and this kind of ties into the traveling piece. If we're leaving our kids, you know, my spouse and I are going on a vacation. What would be your best practices sarin and Tom, you know, in the event that, you know, hey, we're gonna be gone for a period of days or maybe even a week. You know, we're leaving, say the kids with the grandparents, what would be a best practice in that case?

Sarah Duey  3:31  
I think making sure you have a medical consent form in place is a step in the right direction. Josh, many pediatricians offices or children's hospitals have these forms, and they're probably even available online to download. So what you're doing is you're saying, you know, we're away, we're away. During this time period, we temporarily give, you know, my sister, if she's taking care of my kids, for example, my minor children, the ability to make decisions and treat my children, take them to the hospital, take him to the doctor. And then make sure that the person taking care of your children has copies of this and that they're available. So that would be a step in the right direction. Again, million things to think about when you're getting ready to go on vacation, woohoo, Kid free vacation, then you don't have to think about that. But you're thinking of everything else that the kids might need. And you may as well add that to the list of things to just have in order.

Joshua Klooz  4:23  
So what I'm getting from this is I never have permission not to worry is essentially what I'm cleaning from this

Sarah Duey  4:28  
Garnet. I know adulting is hard.

Joshua Klooz  4:33  
Got it. I have to shifting still in the same vein of which we update our power of attorney but shifting to maybe our situation or even our parents aging parents situation in the onset of mental illness change our ability to update or compress our ability to update healthcare powers of attorney or or even put them in place if they've gotten out of date or if they haven't been put in place then themselves?

Sarah Duey  5:04  
Definitely. But it will depend, of course, because as we know, the onset of dementia or mental illness is oftentimes gray and there are good days and bad days. The lawyer answer is that in most states, unless the adult has been adjudged, incompetent, or unless a legal guardian has been appointed for the adults, the presumption is that they're competent for purposes of executing a power of attorney. And again, this is in most states. So it's almost like you have the burden to prove that they're not competent to execute this power of attorney. Unless there's that legal guardian. I had a situation where the client ended up being diagnosed with schizophrenia. And he had already executed an estate plan. But then his family got involved and wanted to get a legal guardian put in place for him guardianship and conservatorship, but he had already executed this estate plan. So we had to work with him and help him actually get a third party psychologists to analyze that he did have the legal capacity to execute this estate plan. And that sort of trumped the guardianship conservatorship in the court is very interesting case. So each and every time that he would go to change his estate plan to update it, to change his beneficiaries, we would have this third party psychologist, sort of analyze him and make sure that he knew what he was doing. So that's one way to get around it if there's a lot of question around whether this person has competency to be able to execute the plan or change the plan.

Joshua Klooz  6:47  
Interesting. So, Tom, with that in mind, is it is it ever too late to update your, our attorney from from your perspective,

Tom Fridrich  7:02  
not really, in the sense that as long as you have that legal capacity to talk to an attorney, to understand what you're doing, by naming an agent to make decisions on your behalf, then you really should be able to make any changes to your healthcare power of attorney that you'd like to make. So if your situation changes, and these are oftentimes considered like life events, somebody dies, somebody gets married or divorced. These are the types of life events that sometimes influence you, or create the impetus for you to make changes to your estate plan. And specifically around the health care power of attorney that might even be related to your health condition changing, there might be a health event in your life that tells you, Oh, I really need to look at this, again, to make sure that what I put in here, and who I assigned as my agent reflects my current feelings around the type of care I want. Because the older you get, that might change your thoughts and desires around care. And technology might change, you might see something that you know that she knows and available treatment and think I don't want anything to do with that type of treatment. Or you might say hey, that's for me, Sign me up. And so there are things that are going on in society, in your personal life that might drive you to make those changes and as long as you have the capacity to to do so, then I would encourage individuals to make the changes that they want to make to their document so that it is going to reflect exactly what they want the type of care they want to receive in the future.

Joshua Klooz  8:56  
Well, that is all for today. We appreciate your time and trust that you were 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. We you and your family encounter truth, beauty and goodness on the road ahead. 

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