Preparing Today, Protecting Tomorrow: What Financial and Legal Documents Should Caregivers Have?

Aug 7

As a caregiver for someone with dementia, there are several critical legal and financial documents you should put in place:

Legal Planning

Durable Power of Attorney
Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care
Advance Directives
Will and Trusts

Power of Attorney

Durable Power of Attorney for Finances: This document allows your loved one to appoint a trusted individual to handle all aspects of their financial affairs when they are no longer able to do so themselves. It remains valid even after the person becomes incapacitated.
Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care: This empowers a designated agent to make health care decisions on behalf of your loved one when they can no longer do so. It ensures that medical care aligns with their expressed preferences and values.

Advance Directives

Advance directives outline your loved one's wishes for end-of-life care and treatment preferences. These documents help ensure their desires are respected even when they can't communicate them.

💡There are many wonderful books about the gift the conversation behind this is for your loved one. Atul Gawande’s book “Being Mortal” was that book for me. It helped me to think about how to phrase this conversation and stop to think about this topic from my mom’s point of view.

Will and Trusts

These documents specify how your loved one's assets should be distributed after their death and can help avoid family disputes or legal complications.

When my husband and I put ours together, our children were quite young. The best advice we received was to include not only “what” we wanted each of them to have but “why”. That made me reflect back on my father’s will, where he left my husband his math textbooks. How math is taught had evolved so much since those textbooks were written and we had no idea why those books were so important to him. It made us wonder and once he was gone we had no way to clarify.

Help your loved one, while they can still think and communicate in detail what is important to them, for whom, and why is not only a gift for them but for the recipient of their asset(s).

Financial Planning

Review and organize financial documents, including bank accounts, investments, and insurance policies. If you are the primary caregiver and healthcare POA, you will need access to the funds to pay for their care. You’ll need to know how much money there is, what the sources of income are, and what treatments, medications, and requirements of care (e.g. referrals, prior authorizations, etc.) that are part of their insurance coverage.
Clarity of roles and responsibilities as soon as possible. If your loved one has a separate trustee from their healthcare support, there will need to be clarity on how access to these funds will be provided. Engaging your loved one in this process while they can indicate their wishes saves families a lot of heartache and argument in the future. The discussion on how you as the primary caregiver will / won’t be compensated for your caregiving should also be addressed sooner than later. Some states have resources available for the caregiver. Explore those as early as possible.
Estimate current and future care costs to create a comprehensive financial plan. And put a process in place to review that plan regularly as caring responsibilities evolve.
Explore potential government benefits, such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), or Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Review any existing long-term care insurance policies. It is important to know what is covered, when, and how it must be requested is important.
If applicable, check for Veterans benefits that may help with expenses, in-home care, and other support services.

Additional Considerations

If these documents don’t yet exist, you may be able to start with a Google search for templates or services like Legal Zoom to create the initial documents.
If possible, I would strongly encourage you to meet with an elder law attorney to ensure all documents are properly prepared and legally valid. If there are multiple caregivers and/or family members associated with your loved one’s estate / will / trust, having a third party to make sure the documents reflect your loved one’s wishes can also help with managing future disgruntlement.
Consider setting up direct debits for bills to simplify financial management. You can also set up payment by credit card if direct debit isn’t possible so that you minimize the number of bills that you have to pay. With a clear financial plan in place, you can anticipate the cash flow needs for your loved one’s care.
Explore options like "chip and signature" cards to help your loved one maintain some financial independence for as long as possible. It is important to ensure that these are not linked to other accounts and that the balance in these accounts is limited so that their financial exposure is managed.

💡A friend of mine solved this by providing a bank card that wasn’t attached to a bank account at all and had no money associated with it. Just having it in her wallet gave her mom peace of mind. She and her siblings made sure that when the card was used, one of them was with her and quietly gave the waitress / teller / vendor a card that did work.

By putting these legal and financial plans in place early, you can ensure that your loved one's wishes are respected and that you have the necessary authority to make decisions on their behalf as their condition progresses. This is such an important set of documents to get in place quickly, we’ve created a downloadable toolkit to support you further.

You're not alone in this journey. Together, we can face the challenges of dementia with compassion, understanding, and hope. Glya Health was started with a commitment to being a “friend in your pocket”, for the duration of this journey. We are honored to share it with you.

In solidarity,