Estate Law Articles

4 Dangerous Holes in Your Estate Plan That Could Hurt Your Family and Cost You a Fortune

Dangerous Hole #1: Disability Planning.  You have two children who live within 30 minutes of you.  Your other child lives out of Province.  You suffer a severe stroke and require monitoring 24 hours a day.  One local child wants to move in with you and provide all of your care.  The other local child thinks an assisted living facility would be safer and provide better care.  And your out-of-Province child wants you to use your income and savings to hire around-the-clock home health care aides so you can stay at home.  Who decides on where you should live and how to use your money?  Make sure YOU decide by properly planning for any disability or incapacity.

Dangerous Hole #2: Assisted Living Care Planning.  One spouse requires assisted living care and the other spouse continues to live in the family home.  Neither spouse wants to think about nursing home placement.  After several years of paying privately for assisted living care, they have spent almost all of their life savings.  Now, how will the healthy spouse avoid total financial ruin?  Proper advance planning can prevent this terrible problem.

Dangerous Hole #3: Second-to-need-care Planning.  One spouse gets sick.  The other spouse cares for the sick spouse in their family home.  Then the caring spouse gets sick.  Now, who cares for both the first and second spouse?  Without proper advance planning, how can you hope to solve this problem?

Dangerous Hole #4: Who-takes-care-of-the-finances.  The spouse who handles the money and writes the cheques dies.  The surviving spouse is now left with handling the money, something he or she has never done.  Now, who pays the bills? With proper advance planning, you can solve this problem.

You're Invited to Call or Email Today