We all hope to get through this life without upsetting very many people and especially so when it comes to the members of our family that we love and cherish. The time will come when we all have to leave this beautiful world and during our time here, we will have accumulated some things and money that we would like to pass on to our loved ones. Anyone with any experience at all will tell you that money and family just don’t mix and it has caused many Australian families to drift further apart than they currently were before a family member died.
You do not want to find your family members in this situation and so this is why you need to set up some kind of enduring power of attorney which shall be your way of planning for what happens after you die and hopefully will help to cancel out any problems that might arise. You can grant the authority to an individual that you trust to make very important decisions in your life like end-of-life healthcare and how your assets are to be divided up. If you are unsure about what a durable power of attorney is and what are the benefits then hopefully the following can help to educate you.
- You choose the decision maker – If you were to die and not have some kind of power of attorney in place then it will generally be the courts that will decide how your assets are to be broken up. This may be contrary to what you want to happen and so by choosing someone to make the decisions for you with regards to your health and finances, this makes an incredible amount of sense.
- It includes all your family members – What is meant by this is that wanting to set up a power of attorney creates a situation where you get to talk to all of your family members about who they think will be an excellent choice to make the important decisions for you. You can set up your expectations with your family members and particularly with the person who may be named as the agent.
- It removes all of the questions – If you do not put something in place to clearly set up your wishes then your family can only guess about what it is that you would want to happen and sometimes that is the opposite of what you intended. Once the power of attorney is drafted up then there can be no ambiguity about what it is that you wish to happen and this takes the responsibility of your family shoulders and puts it firmly onto yours.
When it comes to money, family members can change from the person that they normally would be and so by taking action today and setting up a power of attorney, you’re making sure that in-family fighting is avoided and that no one misses out on what could be regarded as important.