Wills & Powers of Attorney

Wills and Powers of Attorney are all about appointing someone else to handle matters for you when you can't handle your personal and financial dealings. A Will only becomes effective when you die. Until then, it is quite interesting information, usually written on fancy paper. A Power of Attorney can be effective immediately, or if you direct it, only when you are incapable but the appointment you make in the Power of Attorney dies with you.

SHOULD YOU HAVE THESE DOCUMENTS? IN A WORD, YES!

Remember, and this is important, when something occurs that alters the relationship you have with people you appointed as your representative(s) or made a beneficiary, review your Will and Powers of Attorney. Your lawyer cannot keep tabs on everyone! It is your family! They are your friends! You know your life circumstances better than anyone else. DISCUSS the changes with your lawyer. He/She will advise of the effect any changes could have on your affairs. It will then be up to you to determine if changes to your documents are needed. If YOU don't do it, it won't get done!

Unless you appoint someone to be your executor (now Estate Trustee) in your Last Will and Testament, a Court will have to approve someone. Unless you pick an Attorney to act on your behalf during your incompetency, the Public Trustee will become involved. A lot of people just assume that their husband or wife would take over - NOT SO! You must have appointed your Attorney. If you haven't, your spouse won't have any authority unless he or she spends a portion of what you have applying to Court to get it! While the Court application is not difficult, it is time consuming and, more often than not, expensive.

DID YOU KNOW?

Wills have not always been the private matters we consider them now. Roman law required that you read your will in the marketplace in the presence of no less then five witnesses, after which you couldn't change it! 

Nowadays anyone who is mentally competent and over the age of majority can write a Will. The Will is best reviewed every three years or so. Change it if the effect or result is not what you would like to see, based on family dynamics and any changes such as birth, deaths, marriages, separations/divorces, disagreements with your neighbor, trips to someplace other than where you are now; you get the idea.