The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (13 page)
Read The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom Online
Authors: Suze Orman
When you do get the names of some attorneys, please make sure that you interview at least three of them. An attorney plays a major role in making sure your estate is set up
correctly, and your survivors will need his or her assistance after your death.
Here’s what you should ask and what the answers should be:
How long have you been specializing in estate planning?
The answer should be at least ten years.
How many people have you drafted wills and trusts for in the past five years?
The answer should be at least two hundred people.
Will you be drafting the documents yourself or will someone else be doing the paperwork?
It is okay if someone else draws up the paperwork if they are supervised correctly. This may actually end up costing you less. You just want to know one way or the other.
How much do you charge?
You want a lawyer to charge you a flat fee to draw up a will and/or trust. The fee should include drawing up the document and explaining it to you (which could take a few hours, if the document is a trust) and funding the trust, which means doing the paperwork to transfer the titles on all your property and assets into the name of the trust.
If I have other questions, will you charge me if I call and ask?
There should be no charge for simple questions over the phone.
No problem, as long as you don’t die.
If you do die—no,
when
you do die—your loved ones will soon find that by not taking action, you have left their inheritance up to the state.
Let’s say you own your house, which was part of your divorce settlement, and hold it in your own name. Since divorcing,
you’ve remarried and are hopelessly in love with your new hubby. Still, because of the terrible divorce you went through, you feel a little safer keeping the house in just your name. Your two children from your first marriage have never liked the idea that you remarried, and even though they’re grown, they’re extremely possessive of the house they grew up in. If anything were to happen to you, you would want your new husband to be able to stay in the house for as long as he likes, then have the title transferred to your kids. But you haven’t got around to creating a will or a trust.
One day on your way home from work, you’re killed in a car accident. Because you have no will or trust, the laws of the state go into effect—a process called
intestate succession
. Depending on the laws of your state, your husband may own half the house, and your kids (who do not approve of him at all) could end up owning the other half. If they wanted to, they could force him to sell the home. If nothing else, they could probably make him buy out their half, if they’re willing to give up their attachment to the house. In any event, they’ll all have to go through probate and come up with the money to pay the probate fees. Had the children been younger, the state would also have determined guardianship.
A trust specifying what you wanted would have been the best thing. A will would have been second best, even with probate fees. Without either, your loved ones still have the probate fees and your wishes will have gone unheeded.
DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE
Talking about wills and trusts, I’ve heard people say, “I don’t care about any of this, because I am spending every penny I have while
I am alive.” In a way, I understand this. Once you die, it’s not your problem anymore, is it?
But what if you don’t die right away? What if you have a stroke or a skiing accident? What if you are incapacitated to the point where you are put on life support, with virtually no chance of survival? What would you want to have happen then? If you do not decide now, someone else may decide for you later.
For the sake of every one of you reading this book, I hope that you won’t ever be incapacitated or hospitalized, and that a long healthy life awaits you. But in case it doesn’t, I urge you to make the simple arrangements for durable power of attorney for health care, for yourself and for the people you love. Do it now, while you’re strong and healthy. It might be the most important document you ever sign. Most of the other subjects covered in this chapter concern your death. This one concerns your life.
“I promise you that if anything ever happens, I’ll make sure that you do not have to spend your life on those machines,” Sally told her husband.
That was my promise. I don’t even know why the subject came up. We had just come home from Dennis’s forty-fifth birthday dinner, and I guess he was thinking about getting older, but there was nothing wrong. Nothing. Three months later I came home to find a message on our answering machine, to get down to the hospital as soon as possible. Dennis had been in an accident at work. I was sick when I saw him, tubes in and out of every opening in his body. I loved him so much. I asked the nurses if he was in pain, and they said, “I doubt very much if he can feel anything.” They were acting as if he were
already dead. The doctor came in right away and said there was little hope—in fact, in his opinion there was no hope—that Dennis would ever come off those machines. I kind of lost it then, and I kept screaming over and over, “But I promised! No machines.” They had to give me something to calm me down.
Dennis’s family started to arrive one by one. As the days and weeks passed, it became very obvious that even though the wounds were healing, Dennis would never be my Dennis again. He would never come off those machines. The doctor said that in order for us to disconnect them, I needed to have a something or other for health care. I didn’t know what it was then, but I sure know now. I didn’t have it in writing, I just knew about my promise, I kept telling them that. The doctor was starting to see if there was any way around it when Dennis’s sister stepped in. She said it would be over her dead body that they would disconnect these machines. She said she and her brother were like one and there was no way he’d want to disconnect the machines.
That was eight years ago now and nothing much has changed. Dennis is still on the machines. This is still so freaky to me. It was as if Dennis somehow knew something like this would happen, and that is why he made me promise. My promise meant nothing, but I hope he knows somewhere inside him that I’m still trying to keep it.
She’s still trying today. When I asked Sally if it’s sad to see her husband this way after so many years, she said, “Not as sad as the fact that I didn’t keep my word to him.” This disagreement between the sister and Sally went to the court system after seven years and Sally lost—which makes it all the more important to have a written document regarding health care. The sad thing about this is that it did not have to be this way. If Dennis and Sally
had that “something or other” for health care—durable power of attorney for health care—in force, none of what has taken place after the accident would have happened.
The first part of putting a durable power of attorney for health care in place is deciding what you would want to have happen to you if you were in a situation like Dennis’s. It requires talking to your loved ones and making your feelings known. You can choose from three basic options.
1. You want to prolong your life as long as possible, without regard to your condition, chance of recovery, or the cost of treatment.
2. You want life-sustaining treatment to be provided, unless you are in a coma or ongoing vegetative state, which two doctors, one your attending physician, will determine in their best judgment.
3. You do not want your life to be unnaturally prolonged, unless there is some hope that both your physical and mental health might be restored.
You must also decide in whose hands you want to put your life—that is, who will make the final decision to take you off life support, if the decision ever has to be made. This person is known as the
agent
. Choose someone who loves you, yet who is strong enough to do what you would want him or her to do—not an easy position to be in.
A living will is not the same thing and, in my opinion, not as complete. A living will does make your wishes about life support known to the doctors, who then take them into consideration. It doesn’t appoint someone you trust to make the final
decision. A durable power of attorney for health care not only enables you to put your feelings and wishes into effect, but also specifies who will make the decision if you cannot. A durable power of attorney is also known as a health care proxy. Living trust, living will, durable power of attorney for health care: remember, these are very different documents.
The forms to establish durable power of attorney for health care vary from state to state but are available, free of charge, at every hospital. Just make sure you get the form that is valid in your state. You can also get this form by contacting the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization at 800-658-8898 or
www.caringinfo.org
. Please note, the website’s downloadable Advance Directive documents also include the paperwork for a durable power of attorney for health care. If you are arranging for your trust or will, your attorney can take care of this at the same time. Be sure to distribute copies to your doctor.