I saved this NYT article for a rainy day. Finding Out Your Power of Attorney Is Powerless describes situations where families had a financial institution reject a power of attorney subsequent to the principal becoming incapacitated with dementia or Alzheimer’s. My family had a similar experience recently when my mother-in-law had to be admitted to
Transition Documents
Transition Plans and the Client with Dementia: Caregiver Challenges
A recent Guardian article offers excellent advice to caregivers for individuals with dementia. The author, Cynthia Dearborn, shared her experiences about caring for a father with vascular dementia. Cynthia described how her father’s short-term memory became severely impaired, along with his judgment and reasoning skills. I am having a similar experience with a Transition Plans’…
End of Life Forums: Well Intended, but Sometimes Misleading
We find the AgingCare website to be a good source information for end of life planning. The website includes a forum for readers to post questions and offer their experiences. However, readers need to be careful when the forum is used to seek legal help on end of life issues. One such topic thread began…
End of Life Planning: An Inventory
COVID is forcing American families to confront end-of-life planning. There are numerous articles on the subject, but NPR published one during the summer of 2020 that made a recommendation that is often overlooked: creating an inventory. My wife, the list maker, established our first inventory 30 years ago when our first child was born. …
Final Expense Life Insurance: Some Additional Considerations
CNN underscored recently posted a good article about final expense life insurance. Death care clients have been contacting us more frequently about this type of policy, and we will share some of their issues.
Funeral homes are backing away from the conventional life insurance policy for some of the same reasons. Large life insurance companies…
DIY Funeral Trusts: harder than it seems
Since the onset of Covid, the death care industry has experienced an uptick in preneed sales. As witnessed recently on the Bankrate website, the financial planning industry has taken notice. Bankrate is a website that provides comparisons of various financial products, and recently posted an article titled “The pros and cons of funeral trusts…
New York Times: Can I Pre-Pay without working with a funeral home?
The New York Times article on funeral planning blurs the line between pre-paying and pre-funding. The savings accounts discussed by the article are one method of pre-funding funeral costs. But the POD savings account is far less secure than final expense trusts or final expense insurance policies. The concern many consumers have is that the…
New York Times: What if I Move or Die Away from Home?
This section of the New York Time’s funeral planning article attempts to address two separate issues. The issue of what happens when the consumer moves away is one of portability and whether the preneed contract can be transferred to a new funeral home. As we discussed in our first post on the Times article, certain…
NY Times: But Mom said everything was taken care of
We’re back to that recent New York Times article about funeral planning. The reporter offers spot on advice about the ‘gaps’ of preneed arrangements. A surviving parent will frequently advise adult children that they need not worry about his (or her) funeral because they have purchased a preneed contract. As the article suggests, adult children…
New York Times: How to Plan Your Own Funeral
Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a story that on funeral planning that raised several valid issues and recommendations. We will use the next few blog posts to explore certain issues and recommendations in greater detail. With this post we will start with the article’s discussion of prepaying for a preneed contract, and…