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I’m 82 and in pretty good health and mental acuity. For the last year I’ve endeavored to leave as few elder care responsibilities at the feet of my adult children. Will is prepared as is my healthcare directive, budget plan for long term care, access to financial information. I know these tasks won’t be possible indefinitely.


Too late for your LO to do this? But if it’s not too late for you, I can only say I see this as a final gift to my kids.

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We did our first wills, trust, POA, and advance medical directives when we were in our early 40s. The main reason was because we lived out of state and had three small children and I was concerned what would happen to them if something happened to us. My husband traveled for work a great deal, and we just felt that we needed something legal saying who got the kids if we died. (He has six siblings, none of whom would have been good choices, and I have one who we chose to be their guardian.)

We updated everything about two years ago as the kids have grown up and moved out and our financial situation is considerably different than it was then. It's not a chore to do at all.

I don't know why people put it off, except it isn't a "sexy" purchase to pay an attorney $1500 to write a couple of pieces of paper in legalese. However, I'm very glad to have had it done and to be done with it, because my parents never did theirs until THE WEEK my mother got deathly sick at 85 years old. The appointment with the attorney and the illness were coincidences, but Mom recovered -- sort of -- yet was never the same cognitively. Had they waited even six months, she wouldn't have been able to legally sign those papers.

Having all that done before things really got hairy -- namely my healthy dad dying before my mother -- was a godsend. I can't imagine what a mess I would have had to deal with otherwise. As it was, my folks both resigned from their trust when Dad got sick, so I took over everything as trustee when both were still alive. (Mom wasn't really legally cognizant to sign then, either, but the attorney knew all of us and knew I wasn't going to steal her money and house and kick her into the street.) Dad died just a few weeks after that, and while we were all devastated, I had no issues with any financial or medical decisions because I was already in charge.
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You’re a smart woman to plan ahead for yourself!

Your children are very fortunate to have you as their mother.
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You’ve definitely done a kind, considerate plan your adult children will appreciate. My dad did this for me as executor of his will. He left me a well planned binder with loads of information, I would have been lost without it. There were still some hiccups in the process but nothing bad. The biggest favor he did was a life estate deed on his home that allowed me to sell the house quickly without going through the probate process. We immediately updated our will and other documents after finishing out my dad’s estate, it was a refresher course in the importance of it all being in place. The other component I saw that can help our adult children tremendously is paring down our belongings, cleaning out, getting rid of old items, stop the mindset of “someone will want this” No, they won’t! None of us is getting out of here alive or taking any of our stuff with us!
I agree, it’s a gift to our children
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bkoropchak123, bravo for getting all your ducks in a row. We have done the same thing, tweaking it every year as State and Federal laws change.

For my parents, I had to scramble to get them to an Elder Law Attorney when I found a file that had their Will that they had given me decades earlier. That Will must have been written before electricity was invented, it just felt that way as it was so out-of-date.

It would have been a royal nightmare if my folks, who were in their 90's, didn't get all the legal documents that they needed. The old Will had names of people [half had already passed] to get funds or their heirs.... but it didn't say how far out into the family tree to go. Thus family members I never met, nor their children, or their children's children, or even where on earth they lived, or their social security numbers.

Now Hubby is trying to get his grown children to at least get their own Wills and Power of Attorneys done. This just flies over their head, sigh.
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You are my Idol! SO Very Loving of YOU! What a HUGE gift to your Kids & G-Kids. Makes it easier now to appreciate times w/you without so much stress. Why do not more embrace this concept?! Get the ducks in a row?
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bundleofjoy Dec 2022
hug!

“Why do not more embrace this concept?!”

because it’s a lot less work to do nothing, and to let someone else deal with it (aka your children, etc.). bonus points if you get to enslave someone and use them as a punching bag, when you’re having a bad day. how much better can it get?
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Good for you! Tell all your friends and relatives what you've done and why and maybe they'll get their butts in gear and get it done. It's horrible when people don't get their affairs in order. There is NO need to wait until you're "old" to do it either. Every adult should, especially with children, should do it. Yesterday.
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