Estate Planning for Caregivers: The Legal Documents That Protect Your Family

What happens if your loved one can no longer speak for themselves and no legal documents are in place? Who gets to make medical decisions? Who gets access to the money? Who gets locked out completely?

In this episode of Chat with Nat, Natalie Kime breaks down the estate planning documents every family should have before a crisis happens. This is not just a conversation about death or inheritance. It is a conversation about protecting your loved ones, reducing caregiver stress, avoiding probate, preventing family conflict, and making sure the right people have legal authority when it matters most.

Drawing from her personal experience caring for her mother through dementia progression, Natalie explains why caregivers need to understand wills, trusts, durable power of attorney, medical power of attorney, advance directives, beneficiary designations, and long-term care planning. She also shares how having the right documents in place helped her advocate for her mom, make medical decisions, manage financial needs, and avoid additional trauma during already emotional moments.

This episode is especially important for caregivers, adult children caring for aging parents, families navigating dementia or cognitive decline, and anyone who wants to protect their family from unnecessary legal and financial chaos.

What You Will Hear

• Why estate planning matters for every family, not just wealthy people
• The legal documents caregivers need before a crisis happens
• The difference between a will and a trust
• Why a will alone may not be enough
• How probate can delay access to money and create family stress
• Why durable power of attorney is critical for financial decisions
• How medical power of attorney and healthcare proxies protect your wishes
• Why advance directives and DNR documents reduce caregiver guilt
• How beneficiary designations can override a will
• Common estate planning mistakes families make
• Why dementia and cognitive decline make timing so important
• How to start difficult conversations with aging parents
• Why long-term care planning and living benefits matter
• How estate planning protects your family legacy and your peace

Estate planning is not morbid. It is responsible, protective, and deeply loving. If you are caring for aging parents, preparing for caregiving, or trying to get your own paperwork in order, this episode will help you know where to start.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Casa De Confidence Productions, helping podcasters confidently share conversations that matter.

Thank you for listening to Chat With Nat: Caregiving, Money & Real Life Solutions. This podcast is your trusted guide for caregiving strategies, caregiver support, long-distance caregiving tips, financial planning for families, and managing caregiver burnout. Each week, we provide actionable advice, expert interviews, real caregiver stories, and practical tools to help you navigate caregiving challenges, protect your finances, and care with confidence.

Whether you’re caring for aging parents, managing adult children with special needs, or balancing caregiving with work, Chat With Nat is here to help you care smarter, avoid burnout, and feel supported every step of the way.

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Transcript

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(Music) What happens if the caregiver becomes the one in crisis? What happens if your loved one can no longer speak for themselves and no legal documents are in place? Who gets to make the decisions? Who gets access to the money? And who gets locked out completely? As caregivers, we spend so much time focused on daily survival that many families never stop to prepare legally and financially for what happens next. The reality is that the lack of an estate plan can destroy families, emotionally, financially, and relationally. Today we're talking about why estate planning matters for every caregiver, not just wealthy people. And the documents that can protect your loved one, your finances, your peace, and your family legacy. Welcome back to Chat With Nat, conversations that count. Today we are talking about estate planning, the importance of it, and specifically the documents that can help set things up the way that you want for your own future, the way your loved one wants for their future. But to protect a family and a legacy. This topic matters because caregivers often discover too late that they don't have the authority they need to do the things their person requires. Families will end up in court, siblings fight, accounts get frozen. Medical decisions become chaos and stress skyrockets during already emotional situations. Today's episode is brought to you by Casa de Confidence Productions. Julie and Dan Collins are the kind of team every podcaster dreams of, supportive, professional, and incredibly talented at helping your voice come through clearly and competently. If you've ever thought, hey, maybe I should start a podcast, go connect with them at casa deconfidence.website. My money tip for this week goes right along with today's episode topic. Estate planning is not about preparing for death. It's about protecting the people you love while they're still alive. The biggest financial disasters often happen from lack of planning. Probate can be expensive and time consuming. Caregiving can drain retirement savings quickly. If accounts, titles, beneficiaries are wrong, assets may not transfer the way people assume that they will. Many caregivers are paying bills out of pocket without legal protection. Long-term care costs can devastate families without proper planning. And the proper planning that we're talking about helps avoid frozen bank accounts, family disputes, delayed care decisions, court involvement, unnecessary taxes and fees. So I hope you'll walk this path with me today. Maybe take some notes or if you have an estate plan in place, maybe just listen and make sure that there's not any components that I'm going to talk about today that you don't have in place. But let's jump into this topic and talk first about why caregivers must understand estate planning. The truth is we're the ones that are often handling the appointments, the medications, the finances, the transportation, the emergencies, the housing decisions, but legally, we might have zero authority. Being the child or spouse does not automatically give you legal rights. Hospitals can restrict information. Banks can deny access. Doctors might require legal documentation. Families often assume we'll figure it out later. But later usually comes in the middle of a crisis. You know, my brother and I avoided this topic, avoided this conversation every time our parents brought it up and tell the point that my mom was diagnosed with dementia. Now, in that couple of years prior to my mom being diagnosed with dementia, I got into the financial industry on the personal finance side. I have a background in finance and accounting from corporate America, but it's a whole different ballgame. And I had learned a lot about the importance of things. And so as soon as we knew that we were on a path that was going to lead us down a lot of the issues or progression or lack of memory, all of the things that can create these problems for families. We got to work and we got all of the documentation put in place that we need. Because of that, it has been easy for me to advocate for my mom, to be her voice when she doesn't have her own to use, to ask questions, to get the help we need to make my caring for as simple, as complete, as confident as possible. I can make the hospital decisions, the doctor decisions, the equipment decisions, all of those things, but it's all because we set things up the way we needed to from the get go. The truth is, as caregivers, we're already overwhelmed. Legal confusion just adds another level of trauma and tension for us. Caregiving becomes harder when every task becomes a legal obstacle. I cannot imagine some of the things I've walked alongside my mom and her diagnosis, her decline the last, I don't know, seven or eight months now. I cannot imagine trying to navigate through that, not having the documents I need to be able to make choices, give directions, all of the things. Caregiving is heavy and hard and joyful and beautiful and a gift. But the heavy and the hard can absolutely paralyze you, especially when you're talking about legal topics, financial topics. I wanna give you an example. If my mom did not have a power of attorney, or well, let me step back a little bit. When we set up my parents' trust, we not only set up the primary power of attorney, executor to the trust, all of the things we set up the secondary as well. Because we didn't wanna run into an issue down the road where something happened to dad before mom declined and can no longer make those kinds of decisions for herself, that my brother and I had to go back and go through a whole process from a legal perspective. So on my mom's side, my dad is primary on everything. My brother and I together are secondary. On my dad, my brother, or I am primary, my brother is secondary because my mom can't make those decisions, okay? So we have those backup things in place. We have all the documents. But if my mom had dementia but no power of attorney and my dad became incapacitated unexpectedly, and my brother and I did not agree about care, we would be running into a lot of issues. There's also times that one sibling is caregiving while another is controlling the finances. That can be a nightmare when as the caregiver, you need different things and that other person is maybe questioning everything or maybe trying to figure out where the money is at, how to access it, all of that kind of stuff. Or what if a caregiver loses access to accounts that they're using to get supplies, to pay expenses? Those are nightmare situations that in the caregiving communities I'm in, I hear of all the time. And I wanted to make a point to talk about the kinds of things you have in place, you need to have in place, on a podcast that will hopefully help listeners. So first thing, core estate planning documents every family should know about and have in place. Number one, a will. It says who receives your assets. It names guardians for minor children. It helps direct your wishes. It does not avoid probate. And outdated wills can create huge problems. For example, let's say your parents put a will in place when you and your siblings were little, but your parents have since gotten divorced and remarried, but they never changed the way they had things set up in the will to begin with. That's an absolute nightmare situation. Or they set everything up when they just had two kids and they had three more and never updated things to include those additional children. Having a will prevents confusion and conflict after a death. It helps protect sentimental items and family property. I do not recommend to my clients my financial clients that they have only a will. I recommend they get a trust, which is the next thing I'm going to talk about. And in that trust, it includes a will. It includes a living will that designates where everything goes, but that lives within the trust. And the trust, number one, helps to avoid probate, offers privacy, keeps everything from being public, can help organize asset distribution and can create smoother transitions. From a caregiver's perspective, a trust can be really helpful for blended families, which they're everywhere these days. There's often nuances there because of second marriages, additional children, whatever the situation is that can become really difficult to manage when you lose a loved one. They can also help caregivers when it comes to special needs planning. They're helpful when caregiving costs are rising and they can simplify management if incapacity occurs. So number one, the documents I'm talking about today are important, but it's important that you don't just have a single level of beneficiary, a single level of power of attorney. It needs to be what if something happens to that person who's next in line to manage this part or the overall thing, however you set it up for your family. And it either needs to be set up to say like my parents, for example, my parents had two kids, my parents are like, look, we're going to keep it very simple. Everything gets split 50 50 between you and your brother. You can take care of your kids with the half that you get, however you want to. But we're going to keep it very simple. It all gets split 50 50. If there are tangible items that you don't agree on, they get sold and you split the money 50 50. They kept it very simple and straightforward. OK, so, you know, you could always say all assets are to be sold and divided equally. Amongst. The children. OK, well, that's great if your parents stayed married and only have so many children, but in blended families, that can still create issues. So it's really important to think through all those nuances as you're putting a trust together so that it does exactly what you wanted it to do. Not everyone needs the same kind of trust either. So it's important to work with somebody who understands estate planning and can help navigate. What your situation is to set up the correct kind of trust for you. Estate planning should absolutely be personalized. It should not just be it looks the same for everybody. The next thing that you should have in place is what's called a durable power of attorney or P.O.A. This is huge for caregivers. It allows somebody in my case with my parents, it allows me to handle the finances and legal matters on behalf of my parents. This is a critical document to have if someone becomes incapacitated. So, for example, with my mom's dementia, she is beyond the point where she can make legal decisions, for herself. So it is a game changer. For my dad to be primary, my brother and I to be secondary on her power of attorneys to make sure things happen the way she wants, to make sure if she becomes completely incapacitated in a hospital that we're making the decision she wants. And it actually makes it really easy to not be put in a position where you're making a last minute difficult decision in the middle of an emotional crisis, because you can have a copy of that that power of attorney in place already. So you're not juggling around what's going on. What decisions need to be made. The hospital already knows who to come and talk to for each type of decisions or conversations that need to be had. OK, without it, families oftentimes will find themselves in court fighting over guardianship of a loved one. And here's one thing that I believe is your older loved one you're taking care of would not want that. Like maybe your situation is complicated. Maybe there's a lot going on. But let's say that there are siblings or family members for that whatever reason that aren't included in something. If that's not documented, you're going to have a problem fighting that and your family is going to likely end up in court. OK, but when you have the right documentation, if there's reasons that certain people aren't in certain aspects of those documents, it's set in stone. And putting this together sooner than later is vitally important, in my opinion, because then if that is occurring, you can let people know or if like in my case, when my parents still lived in Utah closer to my brother, he was the primary backup. Medical power of attorney, I was the financial power attorney because I can manage all the finances stuff from 1200 miles away in Texas. But I couldn't necessarily be there to handle all the medical stuff. When my parents came to live here, I am primary for both. But there is not a single thing. Save my mom's monthly supplies that my brother already knows that I'm ordering. But of any substantial amount, more than probably a couple hundred dollars that I don't call and run past my brother. And he tells me all the time, I trust you, you don't need to tell me everything. It's important to me that he feels like he understands what's happening and that he is a part of the process, even if it's from a support perspective. So that's how we handle it. But I know the financial piece can be one of the ugliest pieces that families have to walk through in this process. OK, so we'll go into some more of those things. I kind of jumbled a few things together there. But let me kind of dial back in to that power of attorney. It gives a person or persons the ability to pay bills, access bank accounts, investment accounts, etc., handle insurance issues, manage property and be able to sign documents on behalf of your loved one. Imagine trying to care for somebody full time while simultaneously fighting institutions just for access to help them. I know people are doing this every single day, like I said, in the caregiving communities that I am in. There are people struggling in every area of caregiving. But having proper documentation, having access to the finances assigned to the person who is caregiving or to somebody that is very involved as a support to the person. Caregiving does not exist the way that it should. And there are people who are just lost trying to figure it out, trying to provide for their loved one, but hitting a wall with whoever manages this, the finances are not wanting money to be spent. And yet there's a need for the loved one. And so a lot of times they start dipping into their own pockets to cover things like that. Power of attorney, very important. OK, so that was durable power of attorney. The next power of attorney you need to have in place is medical power of attorney slash health care proxy. This is the person who makes medical decisions. Very important during emergencies. Definitely helps avoid family conflict, gives clarity to doctors and hospitals again. That paperwork can be provided to the institutions necessary to make sure they know who to talk to, who should have access to different things and stop. The conversations from going all of the all over the place, they know exactly who to go to to talk about whatever's on the table. It's a financial issue. It's a medical issue or whatever. Those power of attorneys are game changers in every single every single family. And the reason I say that is because all of us are going to die. None of us are invincible. Every single family should have these in place. And I recommend you have them in place long before you ever need them. These are hard and heavy conversations to have, even if everybody is on the same page. Have them early and get them over with. It saves so much stress later because you honestly don't know. Something could happen tomorrow to a very healthy 30 something, 40 something family member. It's not always just our parents as they're aging that start to decline and need these kinds of things in place. It's all of us. And once your children are 18 years old, there are some rights you don't have as their parents anymore. So I would recommend that you get these power of attorneys in place as soon as your kids turn 18 years old, so you can make the decisions that might become necessary. This is especially important when you're talking about dementia, memory care, diagnosis, where progression happens over time. My mom's decline was, yeah, she was slowly declining physically and from a memory perspective, very slowly for three and a half years. But then it was like overnight. And I hear those examples all the time. They take a drastic turn all of a sudden at one point. Not all of them. A lot of them are just a slow, spread steady progression for years and years and years. Every diagnosis is different for every person. But it is so important because. The need. To put these in place before cognitive and communication abilities decline is so vital. It is so important because once they can no longer make those decisions, you've got to go to court to get court work done. You've got to go to court to get court ordered. Documents put in place so you can make the decisions that you need to. And they may not follow what your loved one would have wanted. So absolutely imperative that you have those documents. Now, I said within a trust, there is a living well will slash advance directive. This covers the will piece. So when you get a trust, you get all the things you need. When you get a will, you get a will. Who do you want things to go to? That's pretty much what a will does, right? As far as assets, money, etc. Now, living will is going to include your end of life wishes. Do you want to be cremated? Do you want to be buried? Do you want your body donated to science? Do you want to be an organ donor, etc.? It dictates whether or not you want CPR administered in certain situations. If you want feeding tubes, ventilators, interventions, it prevents your family members who are standing beside you in a tragedy from having to try and guess what it was or is that you would want. You know, even in this process with my mom with hospitalizations, you know, I go in and I have the clergy come in and talk to me, all the different things from the And they're saying, you know, what are your parents want here? What are your parents want there? And I know the answers to those things because we talked about it and because it is documented in writing and sometimes in the midst of emotional stuff going on during hospital visits, my brother has reminded me now we don't have to carry the weight of making that decision because it was already made. You know, when a hospital comes in and validates with you that your loved one doesn't want to be put on dialysis. They don't want feeding tubes. They don't want ventilators. I'm not making this decision. I'm reinforcing the decision that my parents made while they still could. Now my dad could still make those decisions, but in my mom's case, and my brother is constantly reminding me that I don't have to carry the burden and the heaviness of some of these things because those decisions were already made in place. My job is just to make sure we're honoring them. His job is to make sure that we're honoring them. We're following through with what our parents wanted and what we would promised we would do for them. One of the hardest things a caregiver can carry is am I making the right decision? I cannot imagine. Look, even when or if a time comes that my mom becomes unresponsive at home or my dad becomes unresponsive. And the EMTs come. Now I will say this too. You do not just need a health care directive. You also need an out of hospital DNR. If your parents want a DNR, do not resuscitate. A significant amount of states require an out of hospital one. So we had the standard one in their trust that I provided to the hospital. The second time my mom was in the hospital, when the clergy came up to talk to me, they were asking me about if I had it out of hospital. DNR and I'm like, I mean, I just have a DNR and they're like, oh no, in the state of Texas, you have to have an out of hospital DNR or the emergency responders will absolutely, they are required to resuscitate to start life saving measures. The benefit was the hospital provided that she brought up a witness, you know, had the document. I was able to sign it, get it witnessed. The hospital provided me with copies. So there's a copy sitting right inside the room where my mom is that emergency personnel would be coming into that I can hand them upon arrival. And based on their analysis of what's happening in any given situation, it gives them the information of where to stand down. Now, is it still going to be hard to know I'm handing them this paper? That says, don't do all the things for my mom. Course, it's still hard, but it's her decision, not me making it. There is so much guilt. I've talked about this probably in some way or another in every single episode I talk about caregiving in, which is pretty much all of them these days. There's so much guilt already there. We put guilt on ourselves that isn't even ours to carry as caregivers. Without this documentation, that would be 10, 20, 100 fold. I absolutely believe that. And then you've got the family disagreements. Well, look, if your parents put their documents in place. Your family can be upset with you, but it's not you making the decision. It's the decision that your loved ones made. And then just the emotional burden of uncertainty. What should I be doing in this situation? That 100% leads to the guilt, guilt, guilt in every single thing. Gosh, did, did I handle hydrating my mom well today? Did I handle feeding my mom well today? Did I keep my mom comfortable all day? Like all of those little thoughts will pop up on the daily. When you're talking about big things, medical decisions, financial decisions, that burden is exponential. So not knowing. What your loved one would want just makes it that much heavier. Okay. I want to shift now and talk about beneficiary designations. This is a huge area that gets missed. First of all, you've got life insurance, retirement accounts, annuities, bank accounts, transfer on death accounts. They all have beneficiaries and they may be different. Or the percentage split between beneficiaries may be different. Who knows? That's all based on how the person set them up. Okay. But keeping those beneficiaries accurate is important. For example, there was a time my son's father was the beneficiary of my life insurance policy. We were married. The beneficiary on my medical insurance, on my life insurance through work, all the different things, my bank accounts, my investment accounts, everything. When we got divorced, if I did not update the beneficiary, when I passed, that would have all gone to him. In my situation, if my son was less than 18 years old at my passing, my brother would have been my primary beneficiary with my son as the secondary. And my brother had the instructions on how to manage those accounts or those funds and tell the point that my son became an adult and then my trust designated. Here's the breakdown of how that pays out to my son in increments over an extended period of time. I have enough life insurance that I would want that handed to an 18 year old. My son's 25 now. I wouldn't want him handed over a million dollars in one lump sum all at once. And my son's got a pretty good head on his shoulders, but he's also 25. So it breaks up in portions and pays a portion at 25 now updated because he is 25. It pays a portion at 25, a portion at 30 in the balance at 35. Because the importance of how we plan the way that we handle money, our level of maturity shifts a lot in, it did for me between 25 and 35 years old. And then there are portions of that that would stay within my trust to continually take care of different things like education, down payments on homes and things like that for future generations. Beneficiaries override wills. Let me say that again. Beneficiaries override wills. So let's say I had updated my will to take my ex-husband out of it and put my brother in, but I had not changed the beneficiary of my life insurance policy. That money would have went to my ex-husband. It would have overrode the will if I only had a will. Okay. Beneficiaries, life insurance, all of those accounts we talked about life insurance, retirement accounts, annuities, bank accounts, transfer on death accounts. Those accounts don't go through probate because they have beneficiaries. The only time that they're going to go into probate is if you have it set to go back to your estate and there's no estate plan, or if all the beneficiaries maybe have passed. Right. But as long as you keep those beneficiaries up, those are always going to stay outside of the probate realm, even if a trust is not in place. I already talked about ex-spouses still being listed on things. Another big one we see is no contingent beneficiaries. Again, anything can happen to any one of us at any given time. We may get called home. If you don't have a backup beneficiary and you pass, again, like I was just saying, there's nowhere for that money to go. It goes back into your estate, goes back through probate if you don't have an estate plan in place, et cetera. It can create problems when there is unequal planning unintentionally, meaning you plan for, like I was saying earlier, your first couple of kids you have, but then you have more kids and you don't really put a plan in place, but your first two kids were named at the breakdown of everything. And now your other kids are not named at all. There's a million different scenarios that can fall under that, but that's a pretty easy example. You didn't intend to plan unequal for your children. It wasn't intentional. They weren't around yet, but you never went back and cleaned that up the way you would wanted it. And then there's also outdated paperwork just for whatever reasons, there could be a million things. It's always important to make sure that whenever there is a major life change, you review beneficiaries, a marriage, a divorce, a death, an adoption, whatever it might be that you adopt, been adopt, that you update beneficiaries, you update your trust package. Okay. And yeah, it costs you a little bit if you need to make some changes. But it's a lot less than what it's going to cost your family to have to run things through court if something got overlooked or the impact it could be to somebody that's left out and there's nothing they can do about it. Next, I want to talk about estate planning and dementia cognitive decline. Okay. It is important to. It's, it's important to in general to do this. But timing matters, legal capacity matters because once competency is lost, options become limited. Then I did talk about this a little bit earlier. As soon as my mom was diagnosed before it was determined, she could not make legal and financial decisions for herself. As soon as she was diagnosed, we got to work on getting this paperwork in place. And if I could go back now. When my parents were maybe in their fifties and sixties and wanted to sit down with us, I would go back and have those conversations even then, you know, luckily we were in the situation that we could put everything in place. We needed to, because I knew what we needed to do. Now, granted in my forties or fifties, I didn't do what I do now. I didn't understand how everything worked and. That was part of why those conversations never happened. I like, we do not want to talk about you guys dying. That's depressing. But the truth is, it's a lot easier to talk about when they're still here than in the midst of losing a loved one and trying to figure out a hot mess. Okay. Families often will wait too long out of denial. How much does this sound familiar from the story I've shared about my own family? We didn't want to talk about it. We were in denial that, you know, someday they were going to die. It was uncomfortable to talk about fear of having those hard conversations. And so we kept saying, we'll do it later. We'll do it later. We'll do it later. And if you're watching this on video behind me here, I'll grab it. This is my parents red folder. For at least a decade. Every time I went into town, cause I lived out of state, my parents would say, Hey, let's pull out the red folder. And we'd be like, no. I still keep that red folder for that reason. There's a little sentimentality to it now. Um, but also to point out like, look, having your stuff in a red folder, just in a red folder, purple folder, whatever color your folder is, doesn't cover all your basis. Okay. And my parents had all the documents in there of everything they had, their assets, their funeral planning, all of the things. But they didn't have a trust. They did have a will, but it was extremely outdated and they did not have a trust. Those early conversations matter when that, yes, they're going to be emotional. But when that emotion you're going to handle 20 years before something happens is going to be less overwhelming than the emotions you will have in the middle of a crisis, trying to make those decisions. Okay. Planning these things before crisis occurs, preserves dignity and putting these things in place removes the pressure from emergency decisions having to occur. If you want to talk about the guilt, am I making the right decision? As I mentioned earlier, that's where it is right there. And if you don't have, I mean, even more than the financial piece, I think knowing what my parents do and don't want from a medical perspective is because my, now we're blessed, my brother and I have a great relationship. We've always said, we're not fighting over anything. If we both want the same thing, if the option is selling it and splitting the money, I would be like, take it brother. And he would be like, you can keep it sis. Right. But not every family is like that. And so, um, early conversations, preserving dignity by planning ahead of time and removing pressure from emergency decisions, having to be made game changers as a caregiver, just as a family member in general, right? Like I said, we're all going to pass at some point, whether we need caregiving or not on our way back home in the future, these things being in place is just in my opinion, an incredible way to show love to your family and the legacy you created through your family by having those things in place. So they don't have to carry the stress and wonder what you would have wanted. The financial impact of not planning. Okay. Let's get real cost of long-term care, legal battles, probate delays, family caregivers, leaving the workforce and not, not being able to make ends meet retirement depletion, out of pocket caregiving expenses. Those are all a reality. Again, things I see every day amongst the caregiving groups that I am a part of. How am I going to pay for this long-term care that my loved one needs? How am I going to pay for an attorney to put the documents in place that we need or to get guardianship? How are we going to pay for our loved one's funeral when everything they have is now wrapped up in a probate legal process? All of the things, how am I going to afford my life if I leave work to take care of my loved one, all things that you should be thinking about planning for and making sure you're financially prepared for. Many caregivers reduce their work hours, something I see all the time. Even for me, with my mom's decline, my work hours have shifted the last few months because of the level of care she needs now versus what it was prior to that. So even owning my own business that allows me to work from home and caregiving for my mom, both my parents, but really hands-on with my mom. I've had that impact of reducing my hours. And then what about saving for retirement? If you leave work, a lot of people are only saving through a 401(k). So if you leave work, you're not saving for retirement any longer. And then there's the draining emergency funds, like I said, because you start paying out of pocket for things because you don't know where the money is or how to access it. And so you end up taking on debt to provide for your loved one, because I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't just set them out on a straight corner and leave them there, wouldn't just leave them in their home that's unsafe for them and taking care of unfed, uncared for. Right? So we're going to figure it out. And that usually means we're going to go into debt. We're going to drain our own retirement accounts, whatever that looks like, whatever we have to do, because that's our mom or dad. Or sibling or child. A lack of planning doesn't just affect the person that needs care. It can financially impact a family for generations. Some of the difficult conversations that families avoid, and I talked about this a little, a little bit before, but let me give you really the nitty gritty things. I talked about power of attorney and healthcare directive. Okay. Let's get real specific. Topics families need to discuss, but typically avoid end of life wishes. Do they want to be resuscitated? Do they want to be kept alive by machines? Do they want life saving measures? Do they want a funeral? Do they want to be buried or cremated? All of those things should be discussed ahead of time. The finances absolutely without question. And I've talked pretty in depth about that part. What their medical preferences are. Venerable wishes, long-term care desires. Who will help? Who has authority? What happens if the caregiver burns out? Those are conversations people aren't having in part because they don't know they need to be having them. Also because they don't want to be having them. But neither of those make the situation better in the future. Both of those situations actually make things heavier, harder, harder and more volatile in the future. The fear we may have in having those conversations does not stop the reality that there will be a time that we get to the place that those decisions need to be. Happening. Avoiding those conversations creates bigger crises later. So how can you have some of those conversations? Ask the question, mom, dad, sibling, whoever, spouse, what matters most to you if your health changes? What kind of care would you want? Who do you trust making your medical decisions, your financial decisions? Do you have any of the documentation in place for that? When was it last updated? And where is that documentation located? One of the things that I help a lot of my clients with as a wealth strategist is I am not an estate planning attorney, but I have connections to estate planning services that I can connect my clients with. We can make sure all their financial things we're setting up are included correctly in the paperwork that they're putting together. But part of their overall financial plan is to make sure that they have a complete and robust trust that handles all their assets. Even if you think I don't have enough to worry about, do you own a house? Do you own a car? Do you have any money in the bank? All of those things are going to be affected. Okay. So what do you have in place and where is it located? Estate planning is truly an act of love. It's one of the biggest things you can do for your loved ones when they're carrying the weight of losing you at some point in the future. Estate planning says, I love you enough to prepare in advance. I don't want you to have to guess what I would want. I don't want you fighting. I want you to be able to protect your own peace in whatever that journey looks like in the future. The greatest gift that caregivers can receive is clarity, not perfection, not unlimited money, clarity. What would you have wanted? How do you want things handled? Who do you want involved? What decisions do you want being made? My hot take for the week. Too many families spend years avoiding uncomfortable conversations and then spend months or years living in the chaos that follows. Estate planning isn't morbid. Get that out of your head. It's responsible. It's loving. It's protective. And caregivers especially need to stop assuming someone else has it handled. If you are looking at becoming a caregiver for a loved one before you ever step into those shoes, you should ask, where's the money? How much is there? Do you have long-term care, living benefits in place? Who wants to be a caregiver? What do you want? Mom, dad, spouse, sibling, child? If it's a child, I guess, as the parents, you're deciding that. But, but what would you want? When crisis hits, paperwork matters. Authority matters. Being prepared matters. You don't rise to the occasion in emergencies. Fall to the level of your preparation. And I think that can be said about a lot of things in our lives, but I'm going to say it one more time. You don't rise to the occasion in emergencies. You fall to the level of your preparation. And if you are not prepared, your family are the ones who will be falling. And so that is my challenge to you as a caregiver to immediately have conversations, to understand all of the components of what I've talked about if you don't already, but even more importantly, to put these things in place for yourself, if you need help. If you have questions, I would love to be a resource for you. You can reach out to me at no cost to have a conversation about questions you have, concerns you have, things you need to put in place for your own family. And I promise you, there will be a lot of it I can help you with. But if I can't, I'll get you connected to the people who can, that I have trusting relationships with. Okay. So I'd love to be a resource. If you need it, you can reach out to me in the show notes, wherever you listen to this episode. You can also connect with me on Instagram, Natalie McPhee Kime. That is the main place I post all of my caregiving content and which includes the work that I do. Being in the financial sector has made it so much more important for me to talk about caregiving and being properly prepared. And I think those two things just kind of came to be on purpose because that's, that's the calling that I was going to walk when it comes to my business and my career. I want to encourage you guys to review any products or policies you have that include beneficiaries this month. Make sure that you dig through and locate all important documents. If you can't find them, you need to replace them. You can't keep saying, Oh, I'll keep looking. I'll keep looking. Nope. If they're not there, recreate them. If at all possible, they might have needed to be updated anyway. Have at least one difficult conversation this week, even if it's just to ask mom and dad, what do you have in place for when you pass? Or spouse? What do you want things to look like when you get called home? Or maybe you started by saying, Hey kids, spouse, here are the things I want when that happens. Meet with an estate planning professional. Again, if you need help connecting with one, I can provide that for you. I'm happy to do that. There's no cost to connect you over there. And then based on your conversation and what you want to put in place, they'll go over all of that with you. Make sure you're reviewing any long-term care or living benefit plans you have, whether they're standalone or attached to life insurance policies. And yes, you can get long-term care or living benefits attached to a life insurance policy. It actually costs you less for your long-term care and living benefits to put them in place that way. And what it means is that you can tap into the death benefit of your life insurance while you're still alive. Should you need that care instead of buying a standalone long-term care policy that if you never use all the money you paid for it is gone. Okay. So sit with somebody and understand what's available to fill in any or all of the gaps that you and your family members might have. Make sure you're organizing passwords, accounts, policies, create a caregiving emergency binder, and make sure that you don't just have one person that knows where that is. Share that with a couple of people, your beneficiaries, and then your contingent beneficiaries, the executor of your trust, whatever that looks like. But make sure people know where to find that pertinent information because having that at your fingertips in the middle of a tragedy is a game changer. I want to thank you guys for being here with me today. I'm talking about these things. Even maybe listening to this might have triggered, hopefully it triggered something in you to take action. It may have triggered in something in you that you're like, I'm just not ready. Please reach out to me to have a conversation. If you feel that way, they are not fun conversations. They never will be, but I promise you they're easier now than later. So if this episode helped you, please share it with someone caring for aging parents, a spouse, or a loved one. These are the conversations families need to have before crisis forces them to. Last week's episode, I talked about advocating as a caregiver. And if you haven't listened to that and you find yourself in caregiving shoes, trying to figure out how to find your voice or speak better for your person, please go back and listen to that episode. And next week I will be sharing the process that I went through with my entire family who was in town last week in pre-planning the details of mom's funeral. We don't know if we have weeks, months, or years with her. But one thing that hit me is when that does come, if dad's still here, which at this point, I don't see why it wouldn't be, I'm going to be trying to support him through that process and trying to manage my own way through my grief. And the last thing I want to be trying to do is throw together a funeral that truly honors my mom. So when you want to talk about difficult conversations, my family and I had those last week, but the weight that it lifted off my shoulders and the piece that it gave me was immeasurable to know that even at that level, we are now all on the same page and it's just a matter of making phone calls and triggering actions whenever that time comes. About 70 percent of us are going to need some form of long term care in the future once we reach age 65 or older. Millions of Americans are unpaid caregivers. Probate can take months to years, depending on the estate and the state they in. And a large percentage of Americans do not have updated wills or power of attorneys. So if that's you, please, please. My call to action is to take action in that area. I want to thank you guys again for being here with me today, and I want to challenge you to take the time to do the heavy and hard things, because at the end of the day, protecting your loved ones is the ultimate goal. Leaving less of a burden, less concerns when they're in an emotional situation, I think is probably what we would all want. So I challenge you to make sure that your family has the paperwork that protects them when the time comes. I'll see you again next week on Chat with Nat and until then, stay safe.