Your kids or parents may now live in different states. You may need to meet on the holidays because that is when you come together. Don’t do it when you sit down for Christmas dinner, but carve out some separate time just for this
discussion. Talk about family business, estate planning, and why that’s important? Remember, your parents are aging, and you’re aging.
I’ll give you an example. I have a close friend whose mother got a call, and they said, hey, you’ve won the lottery. Now, she was suffering from early on-set dementia, and everybody knew it, they knew something was wrong, but nobody talked about it. It was kind of like, sshh, don’t talk about it. That’s what families do, they shove it
under the carpet, they don’t take action. So, this phone call, they said you’ve won the lottery, all nice and polite, all you need do is send us $50,000 dollars on the taxes of the winnings and we send you your millions. What’s your bank account number, what’s your credit card number, great. $50,000 gone. There are so many scams out there.
So, how do we prevent things like that?
Have conversations, plan, talk and take action. One thing you can do
in that situation is either pursue a Guardianship, or put in place a General Durable Power of Attorney, and maybe have something on the accounts that makes it harder to clear that transaction. Just have some ‘control’ put in place so it’s harder to give away land or money or property.
One way to prevent things like that is to have your foundations in place for your parents and yourselves. Everyone 18 to 180 should have their ‘General Durable Power of Attorney’ in place,
and ‘Healthcare Power of Attorney.’ I want to appoint a specific person I trust to make my life or death and even long term healthcare decisions.
You can’t have more than one person calling the play, everybody would be fighting with each other.
You do not want to have three quarterbacks on the field when your life and finances are on the line. You want to designate one trusted person who will make the decisions for
you.
What about ‘Living Wills’? Put those in place so you can say, if I’m terminal, incurable, brain death has occurred and I’m being maintained by a respirator, do I want to continue on that way? And do I want to put that on a family member to make that guilt-ridden decision?
You should also have a ‘Will’ to allow you to pass your property the way you want to pass it, not the way the state of North Carolina has chosen to pass it for you. I
guarantee, the State has already chosen a path for you, and your property.
Nowadays there are second marriages, and step children, things aren’t as cut and dry anymore. You’ve got a second husband or wife who is living in the house and you’ve got a daughter whom you wanted to inherit the house. There’s all kinds of situations.
Those are your foundational types of planning situations. You need to have those bases
covered.
Get on the same page as mom and dad or your kids. Figure out how to protect all the hard earned money and property your family worked for. Don’t let another holiday season go by and gamble everything.
Remember, you can avoid all the infighting by making simple decisions.
