When my parents health started to fail, I was the adult child that was local and stepped up to help. While my parents had planned well, what I needed was information on their accounts, the locations of their personal documents, and access to their online accounts to help reset codes and update account information.
While I wrote a book that will walk you through this process, I am happy to give you a summary of what you need to collect and organize so you can do it yourself. Having a summary of this will help your spouse, partner, and loved ones that will step in to help should you need it.
Every adult should have a Durable Power of Attorney. It gives someone the ability to step in for you and pay bills, and manage your financial affairs if you are unable to do this — even temporarily. We did this for my son when he turned 18, and I used it to file his taxes one year when he was traveling.
For those of you caring for someone, you know how important, frustrating, and necessary it is to have this document in place. What many people don’t know is how difficult and time-consuming it can be to have a financial institution recognize the document. Many couples don’t realize until, it is a problem, that being married does not give you instant access to a spouse’s account if you are not named on it.
In hopes of giving you a simple guide to organize this information for yourself, I am releasing this free download.
Feel free to share it with everyone you love. Offered.
Thanks, Kay. Currently trying to get everything organised for our own POAs and, though we are in UK, the checklists will be an invaluable resource.
You are very welcome!