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• What is a Durable Power of Attorney
• How life coaching helps
• Putting planning off is expensive – emotionally and financially
• Biggest surprise when people decide to plan. Hardest decisions
• Living Wills and Last Wills are often confused by people

The 2025 Hurricane Season is upon us, and it's time to prepare. Organize your legal documents, save remote copies/backups with family, backup services, and perhaps key people mentioned in your documents.

It's easily avoided.

A good place to start is to do an inventory of what you have. Not just tangible property – pictures, books, etc., but more intangible property like bank accounts and life insurance. Next figure out who you want to represent you with documents that are relevant while you're alive and those that come into play after you pass. Work with a good attorney.

The other three are essential while an individual is living.

• Durable Power of Attorney – someone who can make financial decisions, access digital assets, do planning for government benefits, sell property
• Health Care Surrogate – someone who can make talk to doctors and make medical decisions if you’re not able
• Living Will – how you want end-or-life situations handled from letting you pass as soon as it’s determined there is no reasonable medical probability of recovery to being kept alive at all costs

Many times people, as they age, decide there will be no more pets because they’re not going to run the risk of dying and not know where their animal will go.

Trust is the key. The people named have to be willing to honor your wishes – not there own – whether as a power of attorney, a healthcare surrogate, or a personal representative after you pass.

These can be VERY hard choices.

• Homes don’t go where someone wanted because they didn’t find out how to get it done.
• Money goes to people you wouldn’t give a dime to.
• Children wind up with family members who look good on paper and who you wouldn’t allow to babysit.

Anyone who is 18 needs a plan – tough things happen, and help is needed. Young people die, and without a plan, things are even more painful and heartbreaking. Without designating people, no one can help.

I do special needs trusts when it’s judicious to do – already existing situation where it will be needed or potentially they’ll be a situation where it’s needed

And, I’ve learned the value of Elder Law – to protect assets of people who’ve worked hard, saved, and have assets, and they think they have to lose everything to apply for government help.

People think they have it done when they don’t. For example, people have Wills that leave a home to their children and think that’s all they need; sadly, without some legal counsel. However, the children will need to probate the Will in order to own the home when they could have owed it outright with a little planning.

If you own a home in your name only and get married or get involved in a committed relationship, you might think that person owns the home when you pass – sadly, that’s incorrect.

A “Will” is also a valuable instrument for the tragic situation where someone dies and there’s a medical claim, or personal injury claim, or even if they’re part of a class action suit – like Camp LeJeune. The “Will” provides a place to receive proceeds from an unforeseeable, tragic event.

And they’re ‘revocable’ in that whoever establishes the Trust can change it any time without permission of a beneficiary.   Last Wills and Testaments, if filed with a court after a death, are available to the public at large. Trusts are not.

For intangibles – money, for instance – having accounts beneficiary designated means the financial institutions distribute virtually automatically – no family individual has to be involved.

The effort makes things easier on your loved ones. It's a gift to them.

One of my greatest victories is when a client calls after a loved one has died and I can reassure them that all is taken care of and nothing needs to be done until they’re ready.

If you want something badly enough, it can happen.

This capacity is very helpful in my legal practice as there are often questions that need to be asked that can appear threatening to the person being asked – do I choose this child or that child or someone not related. I’m able to ask with empathy, diminishing the scariness of the question.

I do appreciate the temptation to DIY AND strongly advise against it for fear the document created will not do the job when it’s needed.

Living Wills

Living Wills are documents people prepare for when the end of life is approaching – it provides a place to indicate choices about treatment or not and at what stage treatment ends. It’s an essential document to help the person dying do so on their own terms.

My practice is to recommend a Revocable Living Trust so that a child’s inheritance can be safe-guarded if the child is inline to inherit before they are legally able to inherit money on their 18th birthday, and after 18 if a parent doesn’t want to trust them with assets that young.

Contesting a Will

First thing I would tell someone is “I chose estate planning and probate to never have to be in court. Contesting a Will involves litigation. I will counsel that fees can be expensive and the emotional toll on a family even more expensive. Then I refer to someone who does do will contests.

It’s expensive, there’s no promise of success, it’s emotionally draining.  And, I can refer you to someone who does litigation.

These are not situations my law firm handles. My promise is to not be in a court of law arguing over the settlement of an estate.

I know good people who do help in these areas – I refer them

• Will

• Durable Power of Attorney

• Health Care Surrogate

• Living Will

A fallout of not having one is what happened to Terry Schiavo in Florida while she was still living. A legal battle ran for years with her husband saying she never wanted to live in a persistent vegetative state while her parents argued all the way to the Florida Supreme Court that her condition wasn’t in the state her husband claimed and she should be kept alive.

If you don’t have a plan created by you, no worries!  Whatever state you live in has a plan – it’s called ‘intestacy’ – it’s not inexpensive and often distributes an estate with money and/or property in a manner that has you rolling over in your grave.

In Florida, my practice is to recommend to snow birds – here for several months, that they have a Florida Power of Attorney and Health Care Surrogate.

It’s important to think about your family’s needs in terms of life insurance

Naming someone to make medical decisions if you can’t and carry out end of life decisions makes for peace of mind when the time comes.

Powers of Attorney let someone make financial decisions, and in Florida they go into effect as soon as the documents are complete. It’s essential to appoint someone you trust..

• tangible personal property (books, clothes, jewelry, etc.)

• intangible property – money, investments, retirement, etc

You and your family will be better off

DIY’s are not advised, at least not by me. If a person wants one, be sure to get it reviewed by an attorney.

Leaving assets to minors because good counsel may not have been asked for an offered. Minors cannot directly inherit – it’s costly and emotional if proper planning isn’t done.

What about guardianship of minor children when there’s been a divorce – this can certainly be problematic.

We never know what the future holds. But one thing you can be sure of . . . you can have peace of mind knowing that your valuable assets and heirlooms will go to the people you love.

Finally, if you’ll be so kind as to share one of those memories, I’d be honored to read about them. Visit https://www.londonbakerlaw.com/contact-us, or find me on Facebook.