What should you do if a parent or spouse is diagnosed with dementia?
If a parent or spouse is diagnosed with dementia, they should immediately execute a Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Affairs and a Health Care Surrogate.
Attorney Tom Olsen: Mike says his mom has just been diagnosed with dementia. He wants to know what he needs so that he needs so that he'd be able to talk to her doctors and get access to her medical records. Boy, that's a really great text Chrissy. What would we do for Mike?
Attorney Chris Merrill: The starting point is that just because a loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer's does not mean that they are incompetent. What we would want to do is we want to make sure that, again, confirm that they are not incompetent. Assuming that they are not, we want to do the two power of attorney documents for them, Healthcare Power of Attorney, which is again, also known as Health Care Surrogate and Financial Power of Attorney.
Why? Because now this will allow the child to be able to again, adult children, to be able to pay bills and talk to doctors on parents' behalf. Of course, that can be something that's a short-term or it can be something that's a long-term, like Alzheimer's. Either way, it's about being able to help them, because if at some point, when they do become incompetent, they're not able to conduct that business.
Attorney Tom Olsen: Mike, thank you for that great text. The lesson to be learned here, Mike, is that while your mom is still competent, it is time to get her to sign both a Health Care Surrogate form and a Financial Power of Attorney. That would allow you to make healthcare decisions on her behalf, and pay her bills, and manage her financial affairs on her behalf once she becomes not able to do so by herself. If Mike says, "Hey Tom, I don't have time. I'm not going to be able to get that done." That's not our advice Mike but let's say you don't do that and at some point in time, she's beyond competent to sign these documents.
Mike, your remedy would be a legal guardianship, where you would petition the court to appoint you or somebody else as her legal guardian. Mike, typically, five months and $5,000 to set up that legal guardianship and we don't know who the court's going to appoint as guardian, Mike. It might be you, it might be a complete stranger. Mike, all that can easily be avoided by having a good financial Power of Attorney and a good Health Care Surrogate in place. For all you other listeners, as well, that is a critical document.
Chrissy, when we do estate planning for people, whether we're doing a will or a trust, it's standard procedure we're doing that for them.
Attorney Chris Merrill: That's automatically included. Those documents--