Boulder Estate Planning Legal Blog

Your health care decisions are important matters that can have a big impact on your final days. When it comes time to make those decisions, there is a chance that you won’t be able to make them on your own. This is often the case if your mind isn’t what it used to be.

If this occurs, you need to have someone ready to make decisions for you. This person needs to be able to make the decisions that you would want made. It might be difficult for you to determine who you want to decide these important matters, as your close family members might understandably want to do whatever they can to save your life.

How can you appoint a person to handle these decisions?

There are many reasons why choosing a guardian for your child is easier said than done. Among them is the fact that you need to think about what you want to happen in the event that you are no longer around to raise your child.

Choosing a guardian for your child sounds easy enough, until you actually sit down to make a final decision. At that point, you realize that you can’t just choose the first person who comes to mind. Instead, you need to consider all your options with the idea that you can’t make a poor decision.

Here are a handful of tips that can put you on the right path:

When creating an estate plan, it’s easy to focus on what will happen to your assets upon your death. For example, you need to decide on who gets what.

However, there’s something you may be overlooking: your pets.

Many people are unfamiliar with the fact that they have the opportunity to create a pet trust. While many people believe that providing for their pets in a will is good enough, this is not always the case.

You have a lot going on in your 20s, but you may soon come to find that creating an estate plan would be in your best interest.

For example, if you have children, you don’t want to be without an estate plan. Doing so is a big risk that you shouldn’t be willing to take.

Fortunately, once you know what goes into creating an estate plan, everything will come together. Here are some tips for getting started:

For many people, estate planning comes down to one thing: deciding if they should create a will or trust.

While this is a big decision, you don’t want to stop there. You need to push further, which means learning more about the benefits of a durable financial power of attorney.

As complicated as this sounds, it’s anything but that. With a durable financial power of attorney, you’re granting another person the power to manage your finances if you are unable to do so as the result of incapacitation.

It’s easy to believe that a living will and a traditional will are one in the same. However, as you learn more about both, you’ll come to find that nothing could be further from the truth.

A living will, also known as a health care directive, is a legal document that outlines the type of medical treatment you want to receive in the event that you are unable to communicate your desires as the result of a serious injury or illness.

Although a living will is allowed in all 50 states, you need to learn more about the specific laws in your state. You don’t want to make a mistake that could make it invalid at some point in the future.