June 06, 2024

How Legal Documents Work Together to Help You

26 minutes

This segment focuses on how various legal documents work together as part of your estate planning to make sure you're taken care of if anything happens that makes you incapacitated. Andrea Lee from Legacy Estate Planning joins Suzanne to talk about the pieces of a person's legal puzzle.

Andrea says, "Estate planning is very much like a puzzle. And within that puzzle, there are so many different pieces that come together to create a picture, like a beautiful picture of that puzzle. And the problem is, frequently people might miss a piece or two of that puzzle. They think they've got the whole puzzle in place because they don't have a good understanding of what a comprehensive estate plan looks like. But the reality is, all those pieces come together, and they each serve a different purpose. For example, some of my clients and most individuals need a slew of documents. You need a financial power of attorney that says, if you're incapacitated and not able to manage your own finances, who can manage your finances for you. They might also need a health care power of attorney that says who can make those medical decisions, housing decisions on your behalf, a HIPPA release that allows medical institutions to share information with agents, a living will that gives end of life direction, a disposition of remains that says what do you want done with your body when you're gone. And then maybe a will or a trust, that you dispose of your assets when you're gone. So those are some of the pieces of that puzzle. And the reality is, depending on how they're prepared determines how effectively and efficiently those documents could work."

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