DISABILITY PLANNING

When you are alive and able, you are generally able to handle all of life’s critical decisions.   Daily, you are called upon to handle your financial, legal, and property-related matters.  And, less frequently, you must make important medical and health care decisions.
But what if your personal ability to handle critical decision-making was lost due to disability or incapacity?   There may be no single individual vested with the power or legal authority to act on your behalf.

When this situation arises, the only recourse available is to seek a court ordered guardianship or conservatorship.  But invoking the court’s jurisdiction to rule on these types of matters is often costly, time-consuming, unpredictable, cumbersome, and even embarrassing.  More importantly, the court’s involvement is completely unnecessary.

Proper estate planning operates to fill this “control vacuum” without court intervention.  It enables you to hand-pick trusted individuals, and empower them to act on your behalf.  Moreover, it binds the appointed individuals to follow a specific set of instructions designed to meet your stated goals and objectives.

Generally, the areas of “lifetime control” addressed by estate planning can be broken down into three fairly distinct areas:  (1) control over financial, legal and property matters; (2) control over personal health care and medical matters; and (3) control over the care and nurturing of minor children and other dependents.

We cover all of these areas of "lifetime control" when developing estate plans for our clients.  We ensure that clients have Durable Powers of Attorney to appoint someone to tend to their financial, legal and property matters, and Health Care Powers of Attorney and Advance Health Care Declarations (a/k/a “Living Wills”) to appoint someone to tend to their personal health care and medical matters.  We listen to our clients and help them create trusts to assure the long-term management and safekeeping of an inheritance for children and grandchildren.  Our tax attorneys work closely with our clients’ financial planners and accountants to craft an estate planning that makes good tax sense.  For some clients, our early intervention allows us to implement sound planning techniques that helps conserve family assets while not disqualifying our clients from Medicaid eligibility.  Finally, we maintain relationships with physical and mental health specialists that we can call on to intervene and provide geriatric assessments and continuing care.

Please contact us for further information.

Powell Trachtman Logan Carrle & Lombardo, P.C.
610-354-9700
www.powelltrachtman.com