With age comes an increased likelihood of disability, both physical and mental. Having a disability plan in place that you design with your attorney before any signs of disability begin to appear is vital, given that a court is the only entity that has the power to put a plan in place after a disability sets in.
Planning for disability can be especially difficult, potentially requiring agreement between the individual, a spouse or partner, adult children, or any unrelated caretakers or heirs. While it’s difficult to plan for every eventuality, we can at least plan for those issues we know are most likely to appear in the case of a disability: finances, health care, and living arrangements. These are all enmeshed, of course, but they can be broken down into manageable chunks; especially with the help of an attorney.
The Foundations of a Disability Plan
Financial arrangements can seem to be the most complex, and they are certainly key to healthcare and housing. However, finances are usually the most straightforward to categorize. If folks have planned for their retirement while they were in their middle years, they will have some sense of what their income and expenses will be and can make arrangements with a potential proxy for administering that income in case of disability. There are three levels to this:
1) Joint Account Holder – This is a simple solution for day-to-day access to funds. Any regular income, like Social Security, can be direct-deposited, and both the owner and the proxy can pay expenses easily.
2) Trustee – Frequently, a bank or similar financial services firm can consolidate a person’s assets into a trust, making it easier to manage a set income and planned expenses.
3) Power of Attorney – This is a written authorization to make decisions on another’s behalf in financial, medical, legal, and other matters, and can have a range from very broad decision-making down to specific cases.
The joint account is simple to set up but not as secure as a legally-drafted trust or power of attorney. In many situations, one person may wind up serving in all three of these capacities.
Healthcare and housing decision-making can get more complicated as the hard-to-categorize nature of emotional attachments meets the cut-and-dried nature of legal requirements. Thoughtful attention to these matters well before they become an issue can save a tremendous amount of time, conflict, and heartache down the line.
Making healthcare decisions for a suddenly-disabled person can be very complicated:
Is it a permanent condition, or is there hope of recovery?
Does speech aphasia after a stroke prevent one from communicating their desires?
What levels of care might be needed?
Who would make the best decisions for the individual if they can’t make them themselves?
It’s impossible to know these things in advance, but it’s a good idea to give these possibilities at least some thought before being faced with them.
Drawing up a healthcare proxy for who will make decisions and/or an advance directive (a living will) helps bring a sense of predictability to a very unpredictable area. Since disabilities can be short or long term or permanent or temporary, they present an extra level of uncertainty in medical decisions. A healthcare proxy will give some certainty to an already difficult situation.
Housing is closely related to healthcare when it comes to disability planning. Disability often can involve many levels of care over time, forcing different housing arrangement possibilities – even the forced sale of the family home. A power of attorney plan made with a lawyer makes this more predictable and do-able in a trying time.
Housing choices can also be predicated regarding care demands. Rehab, skilled nursing, homecare, and assisted living are all possibilities. Some of this care can be provided by family members – and sometimes it “has” to be, given financial concerns.
Thinking about finances, healthcare, and housing – particularly in the context of future theoretical disability – is unpleasant. It involves tough conversations and can force us to confront some difficult emotional territory. But the consequences of not developing a plan and winding up with a court-ordered guardianship for yourself or a loved one much more unpleasant.
