Estate planning can be as simple or complex as you want it to be, but it is essential for everyone, especially when you have significant financial assets to address and assign. A healthcare directive, also known as an advance medical directive, has everything to do with your wealth profile and impacts how significantly your assets are affected and earmarked for loved ones.
How Financial Wellness Is Impacted by Health
No one knows what’s going to happen to them physically or mentally as we age. If you want to make sure your assets are set aside for your loved ones per your wishes, it’s necessary to discuss the financial aspects of estate planning with your financial advisor and the importance of a healthcare directive, which includes identifying specific amounts to be spent for healthcare purposes.
The following elements can eat away at assets without a healthcare directive:
- Long-term care: Healthcare coverage for years or decades of healthcare may be covered if you have invested in long-term care insurance, but if you have not or if you don’t have enough insurance, unexpected housing, medical fees, and other costs will affect your finances.
- Healthcare costs in a vegetative state: Whether accident or illness or age leads to a vegetative state, the healthcare costs to tend to a person in this condition are high. Having a healthcare directive, a DNR, and other estate planning documents will ensure your healthcare wishes are honored without draining your assets.
- Hospice care costs: It is smart to earmark some of your finances for end-of-life care, especially if there is a need for in-home hospice. Your healthcare directive can include instructions about how much can be spent before life is allowed to follow the path intended.
- Palliative care costs: Palliative care is intended to improve a person’s quality of life if they suffer from a life-threatening, terminal illness. This type of care addresses the entire person and not just the disease to ease discomfort in all ways. This kind of holistic, expert care can be costly because of the stay and multiple specialists needed.
- Funeral costs: You can dictate funeral planning preferences in estate planning documents and note how they should be paid for using your assets. Everyone has different wishes where this matter is concerned and getting your wants down in writing can ease your last moments and make them easier for the loved ones you leave behind.
Get Financial Support for End-Of-Life Healthcare Decisions
A healthcare directive is an estate planning essential that directly addresses your end-of-life medical care in writing. While healthcare costs are identified in a healthcare directive, you can also name a medical power of attorney to make medical decisions for you if you cannot. The term “living will” is also considered an advance directive and typically maintained alongside a last will and testament.
With help from your financial advisor, you can decide whether your estate planning documents are properly laid out, if they reflect your wishes when it comes to assets and goals for end-of-life care. Schedule a consultation with an experienced financial advisor at Hollander Lone Maxbauer in Southfield, MI, to review your estate planning documents.
