Legacy Made Clear

This is the transcript from this Podcast with Aaron Stringer, Red Cliff Realty

Michael Mollenhauer (00:00.846)
Hi, we're back again with another exciting podcast episode of Legacy Made Clear with your host, the most amazing attorney in St. George, Aaron Stringer. Aaron, how are doing today? Great. How was your intro? Did you like that intro,

Aaron (00:15.857)
I'm doing great, how are you?

yeah, yeah. I could take that every day when I could wake up. That'd be great.

Michael Mollenhauer (00:23.49)
think you some applause on the applause button here. I'll turn it on next time. Well, you know, in our last podcast that we talked about, What Happens When You Die Without an Estate Plan, we did a little preview about today's episode about how to protect your family if you become incapacitated. So fill us in about that.

Aaron (00:46.021)
Yeah, so a lot of estate planning, we've talked about this before, is about...

just being able to share with your family what your wishes are. And that applies with incapacity planning just as much as with planning for after your death. So, and maybe even more, I guess you could say, because what you're doing by what incapacity planning really is, is it's planning for that period of life that unfortunately many people face where, you know, often it's dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that where

You just don't exactly like I said, you don't have the capacity to make decisions. And in order to help your family, you make those decisions beforehand. So if you can tell them, this is what I would want to have happen in this situation. And this is the person or the people that I want to be making decisions for me. That's a huge burden off of their shoulders to be able to just know and have those instructions right in front of them.

Michael Mollenhauer (01:48.092)
that is a good thing. So I understand that within that, within that whole process, there are things that are included like powers of attorney, healthcare directives, trust and things like that. So talk about powers of attorney and healthcare directives. We need to know more about those two things.

Aaron (02:05.595)
Yeah.

Aaron (02:08.913)
Perfect, yeah, those are the two big ones, right? So a healthcare directive is often kind of a combination of a healthcare power of attorney and what you've probably heard of a living will before. So because there, you hear will in all kinds of ways, but living will is directed at healthcare.

Michael Mollenhauer (02:22.706)
yeah!

Aaron (02:29.713)
So the healthcare power of attorney part of it is where you're appointing someone to act on your behalf. So if you can't speak for yourself, you have someone that you know and trust that can do that for you. And then the living will portion of it is letting them know what your wishes would be. So especially like end of life care, do you want to stay on life support under these, you know, terminal conditions and other things like that. They're very important, again, very helpful for your family to know.

Michael Mollenhauer (02:52.578)
Okay.

Michael Mollenhauer (02:58.658)
Yeah, I had a family member who went in for a surgery and we had to fill out all those forms. One of them was the healthcare directive and I was amazed at number one how thick all that stuff was. Every little possible contingency is checked off.

Aaron (03:16.729)
Yeah, and I can speak for Utah. They actually have a statutory document that they use and they just revised what we've been using for quite a while, just this past year. So it is new. It's new to a lot of people and it is a lot to go through and lots of very important decisions to make.

Michael Mollenhauer (03:35.752)
so if somebody has an old healthcare directive, would that still be enforceable or would they need to come in and get a new healthcare directive under the new format?

Aaron (03:46.083)
It is still enforceable, but it's a good idea, like anything, to take it out and look over it every once in while and make sure it's still working for you and doing what you want it to do. And then a lot of it comes down to can the healthcare provider recognize what documents in front of them? And so that's why, you know, it is good to update it and make sure that it has all the different protections and the different provisions that are needed.

Michael Mollenhauer (04:13.729)
Wow. So what about powers of attorney? What's that?

Aaron (04:18.277)
Yeah, so power of attorney similar. if you can't speak for yourself, you're giving someone else authority to act on your behalf, but just a typical general durable power of attorney.

that's for more direct towards financial things. So you're giving them authority to contact your bank and work with your bank on your behalf or government entities, that kind of thing. Again, very helpful. And just like we've talked about in the past about avoiding probate and avoiding court in general, if you don't have to go there by having that good power of attorney in place, you you're you're helping to avoid guardianship proceedings. So someone does your family doesn't

have to go to court in order to get those same authorities that are granted under the power of attorney.

Michael Mollenhauer (05:03.979)
Yeah, I remember when my father, just before he died, had to go in and get powers of attorney. That whole document filled out and I was appointed as the executor of these states. So, I'm the guy that had to go to the banks and to all these other places to get everything set and I had to show them that I had the power of attorney to make these decisions because my dad was

incapacitated. That was an interesting experience. So I'm glad he did that. If he hadn't have done that, I think we'd still be in court.

Aaron (05:35.025)
Exactly.

Aaron (05:40.518)
Right.

Aaron (05:46.094)
Exactly. Yeah. every, every different, you know, bank, other companies, investment groups, you know, they're, they're all going to have their own red tape that you have to cut through. having a good solid power of attorney is going to help cut through some of that and give you access to things that they really need.

Michael Mollenhauer (06:03.465)
Yeah, it really did. We discovered that both my mom and dad had bank accounts and savings accounts and investments. We didn't know anything about them. Didn't have a clue, but everything was spelled out in there. So we had to go visit all these people and make phone calls.

Aaron (06:14.607)
Right. Yeah.

Aaron (06:19.867)
Yeah, once you start going through those shoe boxes that they have all their receipts and bank statements and you do start discovering things you didn't know about.

Michael Mollenhauer (06:29.133)
Yeah, it was really strange. We were going through some, actually going through some of my mom's books and we were flipping through the pages and Linda found like a bank statement receipt in a book. We would have never said, why would she put it in there? I have no idea, but it was like $20,000 just sitting in a book. So,

Aaron (06:53.509)
Hello, I'm-

Michael Mollenhauer (06:56.277)
After that, we went through all of the books just to be safe. So definitely your recommendation is whoever you are, whatever state you're in, status you're in, definitely get a power of attorney and a healthcare directive. In case somebody becomes incapacitated, especially if they're going in for a surgical procedure, because you just never know.

Aaron (06:58.744)
I Yeah.

Thanks.

Aaron (07:21.947)
Yeah, definitely give your family that peace of mind just so that they know what your wishes are and they're not going be guessing about it.

Michael Mollenhauer (07:27.883)
Yeah. Aaron, I'll bet you know of a great attorney here in town that you could maybe refer to to maybe that person could help them with the attorney powers of attorney and healthcare directive. You have anybody in mind that could do that?

Aaron (07:44.017)
I do. There's some great folks over at Red Cliff Legal. is. It is. Yep. So give us a call. Yep. Give us a call. 435-817-9187. And you can send me an email directly to me, astringer at redclifflegal.com. And that's the website as well. redclifflegal.com.

Michael Mollenhauer (07:47.606)
is that that Ellen guy? He's amazing.

What's your phone number? Yeah, what's your phone number?

Michael Mollenhauer (08:10.763)
Great. Well, Aaron, thank you so much today for all this great information. We'll see you guys again next time with another exciting legal adventure with Aaron and Legacy Made Clear. You guys take care.

www.redclifflegal.com

Michael Mollenhauer is the host of the radio / podcast show called -  Make it easy for people to give you money. Aaron was his special guest to share information about estate planning, wills and trusts.

For more information visit the following websites

www.redclifflegal.com

KXFM Radio https://kxfmradio.org/shows/make-it-easy/

www.1to1network.com