IN THE JANUARY 2021 ISSUE OF SISTAH’S PLACE MAGAZINE, I SHARE A PERSONAL STORY THAT ILLUSTRATES THE IMPORTANCE OF PREPARING YOUR ESSENTIAL ESTATE PLANNING DOCUMENTS.
SISTAH’S PLACE MAGAZINE CELEBRATES WOMEN HAVING AN IMPACT THROUGH ENTERTAINMENT, INSPIRATION, AND EMPOWERMENT. GET YOUR COPY HERE.
Knowing Versus Reality
We have been looking at what I consider essential estate planning documents, specifically a Will, a Power of Attorney for Property, a Power of Attorney for Health Care, a Revocable Trust, and an Irrevocable Trust. I have learned that knowing these documents are important and seeing their practical use is not the same thing. I believe most people who say they are important have good intentions of creating them at some point in their life just not immediately because their usefulness is not seen and therefore, they are not a priority. The irony is that once the usefulness of these documents is a priority it is often too late to create them.
One may believe that because law practice focus is estate planning that everyone in my family must have all of his/her estate planning in order. However, that would be the farthest from the truth. On a recent Saturday afternoon, I received a call from my father’s neighbor that he had just been taken by ambulance to the hospital. Some important facts to know are that my father lives alone, that we live over 900 miles apart, that he has zero estate planning documents, and that there is a world pandemic happening. This is the moment he needed a power of attorney for health care and a power of attorney for property, yet he had neither.
Because we are in the middle of a pandemic it is difficult to travel and even if I were able to get to the hospital I would not have been allowed in because the hospital was limiting access to only patients and staff. Therefore, my only option was to telephone the hospital and try and convince the person on the other line to give me information concerning his condition. Well, as you can imagine that did not go very smoothly. It is very difficult to prove who you are over the telephone in order to obtain private and sensitive information about someone because there are laws that frown on that. Luckily on one of my many calls my father was lucent enough for the nurse to ask him, “if he knew someone named Pillara?” To which he replied, “Yes, that is my daughter,” before he drifted back to sleep. This allowed me to gain the smallest window to obtain some general information concerning his condition. If I had been successful in getting him to prepare a power of attorney for health care earlier, I would have been able to obtain his specific medical information, speak directly with his medical team and make important medical decisions based on his directions from day one simply by faxing the hospital the power of attorney for health care. He does not have a power of attorney for health care therefore I was not able to do any of those things.
If you will recall, one of the facts I said you should know earlier was that he lives alone. This is important because while in the hospital his tangible and intangible assets also needed attention. Simple tasks such as securing his apartment, paying a utility bill, and gaining access to his mailbox became near-impossible tasks. Again, it is very difficult to convince someone over the phone to act based on your direction for someone else’s financial benefit again, because there are laws that frown on that. However, if he had prepared a power of attorney for property, I could have faxed it to each person that requested it and completed each task with ease. He does not have a power of attorney for property therefore I was not able to do that.
As I write this, it’s been four weeks and my father is still in the hospital (he is improving every day) and there are still so many decisions that cannot be made and tasks that cannot be accomplished because he refused to plan ahead. It is my hope that this experience will be enough to convince him upon release to prepare his powers of attorney and other essential estate planning documents. It is also my hope that by sharing our story with you that you will see the value and importance of preparing your essential estate planning documents so that your story can be different from our story.
