Power of Attorney Tag

Could this be you? You’re in your thirties or forties, with several active children and a busy social and business life. You’ve got volunteer activities and school programs to keep track of. Your parents are in their seventies or eighties, have their own home, and appear to pay all their bills when due. You have no idea what your parents’ income or assets are because they don’t want to bother...

IT’S SPRING CLEANING TIME! DUST OFF YOUR OLD ESTATE PLAN   Spring time is when people often take a look around and start freshening things up. Home repairs, paint jobs, new furniture, new clothes, maybe a different haircut…… there’s something about seeing the new buds on trees and the blooming daffodils that gets us thinking this way. It’s the perfect time to pull out your old estate plan...

So, you’ve been named as someone’s attorney-in-fact (“Agent”)… now what? To make a long answer short- it depends.   The first question any Agent must ask herself is whether the Power of Attorney document (“POA”) grants her the authority to act on the Principal’s behalf immediately (known as a durable power of attorney), or if the Power of Attorney only comes into effect upon a...

When you sign a Power of Attorney, the person you name to be your “attorney-in-fact” or “agent” is entrusted with certain legal obligations known as fiduciary duties to you. This is known as the Principal-Agent relationship.

If you are in a non-traditional relationship — i.e., the unmarried couple living together for years, whether gay, straight or anyone in between — don’t you want to be the one who decides who takes care of you or manages your decisions if some catastrophe occurs? Of course you do. But if you don’t set up a plan, and you just “leave it up to the law,” the exact opposite of your...

Once a person turns 18, s/he is presumed competent in the eyes of the law and their parents are no longer actually authorized to sign documents for them. This can create a vacuum especially if the parents have generally been managing everything for this young adult. At the other end of the spectrum, older adults may not have anybody who actually has any legal authority to handle things for...

A client of mine recently told me about a situation in which their dear family member was the victim of a scam. Luckily, my client was able to notify Equifax to freeze the victim’s credit, and was able to notify the victim’s banks to place a scam alert on the accounts. The concerned family member had previously been designated as Agent under Power of Attorney, which enabled her to...

A long-term client of mine called to tell me that he had just learned that he had a terminal illness – it was a medical problem that appeared suddenly appeared. He was about 70 and his wife about the same. Their children were self-supporting adults, out of the house. Both he and his wife were retired – he was collecting Social Security and a pension. He had always handled the...

When a married person requires nursing home care, the spouse often seeks advice on how to preserve assets and minimize his/her exposure to the high cost of care. Often this will require consideration of how the Medicaid program (MLTSS or NJ FamilyCare) can help out. Assets may be transferred to the “community spouse,” and beneficiary designations may be changed. Some assets will be...

When you create an estate plan, you are selecting people whom you trust to perform various jobs for you and your beneficiaries. You may be selecting an agent to act as your Power of Attorney. You may select a medical decision-maker in case you become mentally incapacitated. You may have a Trust and select the Trustee who will manage the money for the beneficiaries. And you may be selecting an...