Tag: Advance Directives

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How to Make a Caregiving Plan

— So It’s Ready When You Need It

Talking about aging and illness can be difficult, but experts have tips for getting started.

By Lynya Floyd

Iris Waichler sat at the kitchen table with her husband, Steven, and seven friends. They were gathered to discuss their single, childless friend Paul Mungrides. But this wasn’t a lighthearted chat about finding the 56-year-old a date. They were there to talk about his end-of-life wishes.

A few weeks earlier, Mr. Mungrides was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer that carries a 12- to 15-month life expectancy with treatment. He shared the news with Mr. Waichler, one of his best friends, who organized the rest of the group. They were the only people Mr. Mungrides could rely on for palliative care; his sole sibling lived out of state.

“We had plenty of time early on to talk about what he wanted, what his insurance covered, his finances,” Mrs. Waichler, a 68-year-old medical social worker based in Chicago, said.

Together, they devised a plan: One friend, a doctor, found Mr. Mungrides an oncologist. Mr. Waichler and another friend visited at night, watching Chicago Bulls games and helping Mr. Mungrides bathe. Mrs. Waichler did laundry, arranged meals and coordinated hospice care until Mr. Mungrides passed away in March 2012.

“We took care of him for almost a year,” she said. “We even arranged the memorial celebration.”

If this scenario sounds exceptional — like an ideal end-of-life story — that’s because it is. There are around 53 million unpaid caregivers in the United States, and their experiences don’t typically start with a detailed plan and a committed team. A partner is rushed to the hospital, or a spontaneous visit to a parent’s house reveals a bare fridge and stacks of unopened mail. Seemingly overnight, caregivers can find themselves alone and overwhelmed, careening toward burnout and exhaustion.

Creating a plan, even like the one Mr. Mungrides’s friends developed, won’t protect against every potential curveball. But carving out time before illness strikes to discuss wishes, assess resources, organize medical documents and, ultimately, outline responsibilities can make a fraught process a little less harrowing.

What to include in a caregiving plan

A comprehensive plan should list daily needs and designate a person to handle them once you or a loved one falls ill. It can be incredibly detailed, stipulating who will do grocery shopping or household chores, who will ensure medications are taken and prescriptions are refilled, and who will provide live-in care if necessary.

If you’re short on time, Aaron Blight, the author of “When Caregiving Calls: Guidance as You Care for a Parent, Spouse or Aging Relative,” recommended focusing on five questions: What care is required? When is it needed? Where will it be received? Who will provide the support? How will you pay for it?

There are also legal decisions to make, said C. Grace Whiting, the executive director of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. The legal titles and document names can vary, she said, but you should choose someone, like a health care proxy, to make medical decisions in the event you’re unable, as well as give someone power of attorney, so they can act on your behalf in financial, legal and other matters.

You should also write out an advanced directive, a legal document that provides, among other things, clear guidance about the level of care you want in a medical emergency if you can’t speak for yourself. And you should consider drafting a last will and testament that outlines how you want to allocate money, assets, intellectual property and other belongings.

If you are transitioning into a caregiver role, a legal care contract that describes the caregiver’s responsibilities and any compensation is also worth considering, Ms. Whiting said. “A lot of people just leave $300 a month on the kitchen table for the family member helping them,” she explained. “These contracts not only help avoid family disputes about where the money went, but also help you bypass tax implications down the road.”

Settling legal matters as early as possible will only make the caregiving experience easier down the line, and everyone can rest assured that those affairs will be taken care of. When Andy Jurinko’s pancreatic cancer progressed in the winter of 2011, his wife, Pat Moore, called a lawyer to finalize paperwork.

“It is the worst thing in the world to be laying in your bed, dying, and having a lawyer ask you questions about who should get what,” Ms. Moore, 69, a sweater designer from New York City, said. “If you wait until the last minute, you’re in such a bad place.”

Several caregivers we spoke to cited another person’s crisis as a catalyst for caregiving discussions. “After 9/11, my parents did most of the work themselves: meeting with lawyers and having a binder made up of all the documents we’d need,” Kitty Eisele, the host and creator of “Twenty-Four Seven: A Podcast About Caregiving,” said. “They came to us and said: ‘Here’s the paperwork, here’s the lawyer’s contact info. If something awful happens, you know what to do.’”

But for those who may be reluctant to have those conversations, there are other ways to begin talking about caregiving with loved ones:

1. Start with goals instead of problems.

It’s tempting to problem-solve when you’re concerned, but Liz O’Donnell, the founder of Working Daughter, a community for women balancing elder care with their careers, warned against that approach. Instead, she said, ask open-ended questions that give loved ones agency and allow them explore possibilities.

“It’s not, ‘You know you can’t live in this house anymore’ or ‘It’s not safe for you to drive anymore,’ but ‘What’s important to you as you look at the next phase of life?’” she said.

Claudia Fine, a licensed social worker and chief professional officer at eFamilyCare, suggested explaining that caregiving is somewhat inevitable — most people will eventually need it — while keeping a positive tone. “You can say: ‘At some point, before we have a crisis, I’d love to know what your thoughts are for if something were to happen; that way I can support you in this,’” she said.

2. Remember that you’re on the same team.

Conversations about caregiving can become contentious, but “the preferences, likes and dislikes of the person receiving care should be at the forefront,” said María P. Aranda, a professor of social work and the executive director for the Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging at the University of Southern California. “It’s a shortsighted approach to not engage that person in their own care trajectory.”

You can also decide together who else might be able to help. “There’s an assumption that there will only be one caregiver present during the entire journey,” said Dr. Aranda, who suggested an approach that involves multiple supporters who can change over time.

3. Expect several conversations.

“It’s like asking for a raise,” Ms. O’Donnell said. “You don’t get it as soon as you walk into your boss’s door. It’s a negotiation.”

You might get shut down the first time you bring up the topic. “To you, this is just a conversation about practicality, safety and support,” Ms. O’Donnell said. “To them, it’s about loss, lack of independence and more change in a time when they’re already experiencing a lot of change. There can be a lot of fear around this.”

It’s also possible that your best-laid plans will need tweaking over time. Caregiving is dynamic, and what seemed like a perfect solution might prove ineffective later.

4. Lean on templates and icebreakers.

If you’re struggling to find the right approach, there are many resources available. A public health initiative called The Conversation Project, for example, provides free guides and scripts for starting conversations as well as communicating wishes for end-of-life care. There’s even a card game called Hello! that aims to ease participants into discussing their feelings about living and dying.

Managing care and expectations

Even if you create a plan, caregiving may still come with obstacles. “Sometimes there’s no rainbow at the end of the tunnel,” Dr. Aranda said.

After realizing that her parents would eventually need more support, Dr. Aranda and her sister had a conversation with them about hiring a home health aide. “They looked at us very perplexed and I thought, ‘This is not going well,’” she said. “The idea of having hired help coming into the home was foreign to them.”

Dr. Aranda and her sister ended up taking on more responsibility and increasing the hours they spent with their parents. But honoring someone else’s wishes for their care doesn’t mean you have to set aside your own needs. Experts recommended prioritizing self-care that goes beyond the occasional spa day and focuses, instead, on finding resources that yield financial, physical and emotional support.

“Many caregivers don’t know what services are available to them,” Dr. Aranda said. To explore your options, she recommended asking health care professionals, senior organizations and other caregivers how to get access to resources that could be helpful. “It’s amazing to see how families can learn from one another,” she said.

Revisiting your medical or employee benefits might also uncover things like insurance coverage for therapy appointments, family and medical leave to focus on caregiving or discounted daily care services for adults.

And online caregiver support groups can provide a safe space to vent. “Caregiving can be a lonely road,” Dr. Blight said. “But the friendships that you develop and the people who support you through these difficult times are often relationships that last beyond the season of caregiving.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Have You Prepared Your Advocates?

— Estate planning includes naming advocates in your key health and estate documents. But are your advocates truly prepared to make decisions on your behalf? Our expert shows what you need to do.

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Going through the process of completing your estate planning documents is not an easy process. Working with an attorney to determine what documents you need, how you want the language written so that your assets are handled and decisions are made the way YOU want them, and choosing the best advocates to carry out those instructions can be very involved. No wonder it is a task that many people put off doing – it can be overwhelming!

Common Documents With Named Advocates

The most common estate planning documents that individuals have drafted (and that will require advocates to be named) are the following:



Most clients are so relieved when their documents have been drafted; it is a huge weight off their shoulders to have so many important decisions made and in place. It feels satisfying to have the binder of documents drafted by the attorney in hand and completed.

Perhaps if you are even more “on the ball,” you follow through and get copies of your documents to your financial advisor and update your asset titling and beneficiaries according to the funding instructions provided by the attorney. If you have done that, you are ahead of the majority of clients, most of whom take the big binder home and file it away in a safe place and consider their estate planning completed! But is it?

Have you taken the final step and communicated to those you have chosen as your advocates that you have named them in your documents?

The Importance of Communicating With Your Advocates

It is not uncommon for people to name others as future advocates for them in their legal documents, but not to communicate to them that they have been named. If you’ve ever been in the shoes of being that named advocate, and getting that “surprise” call that you suddenly need to make a life and death decision about someone’s health treatment when you had no idea you were named as their health care advocate and had not had conversations with them regarding their wishes around end of life treatment, you might think differently about having those proactive conversations.

It is extremely important to take this last step, and not only communicate with your advocates that they have been named in your documents but also give them the key information that they will need to fulfill your wishes.

Here is the key information you need to share:

Patient Advocate/Health Care Advocate:

  • Drug allergies
  • Current medications (or where to find your medications list)
  • Your primary providers, your wishes on Code Status (i.e. DNR or full Code), and where your estate planning documents are located
  • Your past surgical history
  • Whether or not there is metal anywhere on your body
  • What your wishes are for end-of-life care and treatments (i.e. aggressive vs. comfort treatment)
  • Plans for future care and any professional relationships and resources that can be used to assist the advocate in their role (social workers, Geriatric Care Managers, etc.)

Durable Power of Attorney/Successor Trustee:

  • Contact information for your professional advisors and, if possible, an introduction to those professionals.
  • Instructions on where to find an “open me first” document (ex. Personal Financial Record System) that details your financial life (bank accounts, investment accounts, insurance policies, government benefits, employer benefits, etc.)
  • Where to find your estate planning documents and a review of your Trust (especially for your successor Trustee, so they have a heads-up on how they might be managing your assets)
  • An overview/general conversation about your wishes regarding handling your assets for future care and your values around money.

Executor/Advocate:

  • Contact information for your professional advisors and, if possible, an introduction to those professionals.
  • Instructions on where to find an “open me first” document (ex. Personal Financial Record System) that details your financial life (bank accounts, investment accounts, insurance policies, government benefits, employer benefits, etc.)
  • Instructions on where to find your Letter of Last Instruction document outlining your wishes for after death.
  • Where to find your estate planning documents, especially your Last Will & Testament, which will be the guiding document for your Executor.
  • An overview/general conversation about your wishes regarding after-death arrangements, about your Will, and how you would like your assets handled post-death, especially if there is no Trust for assets to flow to.

The more information you can share with your future advocates, the better prepared they will be to make the decisions you would want them to make on your behalf should they ever need to serve. An advocate’s job is to be your fiduciary, which means to make decisions in your best interest; without the benefit of having full information on you and your situation, you make it almost impossible for them to do their job to the best of their ability.

If you have taken the time to draft your estate planning documents, our best advice is to complete the process by fully preparing your advocates to serve in your best interest – they’ll be glad you did!

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Not sure how to talk with family about hospice and end-of-life care?

— Here’s a start.

by Connie Ducaine

My family member was clear: She wanted her life to end without extreme measures — to go when it was “her time” with no life support, no CPR, no intubation.

Though my family and her spouse knew this and loved her dearly, the reality of letting her go and following her wishes without “doing more” became difficult as her condition progressed. At the time of her death, medical interventions had sustained her life for several years — against her wishes.

Unwanted, aggressive medical care at the end of life can not only rob you of a peaceful death, it can also place an enormous financial and emotional burden on your loved ones. Fortunately, advances in healthcare delivery at end of life, such as hospice and hospital-at-home options, are combining with more candid and open discussions of end-of-life care to reduce the number of Americans who die hooked up to machines in hospitals against their wishes.

But it takes more than industry shifts and education to ensure that you or your loved one have a desired end-of-life experience. If you want to avoid end-of-life hospital stays, some proactivity is required.

1. Know what documentation you need

What if you were in a car accident? How would you consent to, or decline, mechanical breathing intervention? Advance directives — which can include many different types of documentation — are more than just planning for far-off end-of-life scenarios.

An advance directive should account for any scenario in which you are unable to speak for yourself.

An advance directive should account for any scenario in which you are unable to speak for yourself and need a healthcare proxy to be your voice, whether at the end of a long battle with cancer or after being rendered temporarily incapacitated by a skiing accident. Everyone needs such documentation, not just the sick and elderly.

The documents that set out what a hospital, elder care community or other caregiving entity should and shouldn’t do on your behalf can vary by facility and state, and the methods for ensuring they are considered legally binding can also vary.

2. Designate a healthcare proxy and be real about your choice

The legal and healthcare system will decide for you if you don’t designate a healthcare proxy yourself, with your spouse being the default and adult children second. That’s a pretty solid default, but your closest loved ones may not always be the best choice

Ask yourself: Will they be able to let me go after a long life when I’m ready to rest? Yes? Lovely. But what if I’m in a car accident tomorrow and life support is offered? Will it be fair to ask this particular person to focus on such decisions? It’s quite possible. But it may be kinder and more prudent to say, “I love you, and so you’re not the one to make these decisions. I want you to be holding my hand when I take my last breath, not deciding if I should be on life support.”

For single people without children, it is imperative to have a detailed advance directive.

End-of-life decisions are particularly fraught for unmarried people. While the healthcare system does look for legally binding end-of-life wishes documentation, if no such documentation is found, there’s a possibility that a physician would expend unwanted efforts to extend your life. In extreme cases, the hospital ethics board could become involved in decisions you may have wanted to keep within your circle of loved ones. For single people without children, it is imperative to have a detailed advance directive.

3. Use free resources to plan with your family or doctor

Contrary to popular assumption, you don’t necessarily need an attorney to complete an advance care plan — though it may be advisable in specific circumstances. If you do choose to hire support, weigh that cost against the costs of not planning — which can include unplanned stays at nursing homes, costly interventions that may not result in extending life in a positive way, or family disputes over your end-of-life wishes.

Every state has free, downloadable documents for advanced-care planning available for their residents. If you find them challenging to navigate or understand, your physician can also guide you to social workers and other support. The secure online portal. My Living Voice is one example of a free resource that helps simplify the process of documenting your advance directive. It can help you to think through who your proxy should be, to document your preferences for care during a medical crisis or life-extending care, and to make those wishes both legally binding and known to your physicians, your insurance company, your healthcare proxy and your family.

Prioritize discussing an advance directive at the start of your next physician appointment with a simple ask: “I’d like to do an advanced care plan. How should we go about that?”

4. Share your plans

Too frequently we assume our designated healthcare proxy will “just know” that they are the proxy and how you feel about what decisions will need to be made. Too frequently, that simple communication and documentation doesn’t happen. If the role comes as a surprise to them in the midst of a health crisis (or even an anticipated health event), it can cause undue stress on someone you love.

Another common scenario: You have a living will, but it’s in a file in your closet, completely inaccessible to those who need it most, like your physician

Actualizing your end of life wishes requires that your advance directive is documented, communicated and accessible.

Actualizing your end of life wishes requires that your advance directive is documented, communicated and accessible. If required in your state, get it notarized. Communicate its contents with your loved ones and doctor. Provide your loved ones and healthcare providers with copies, both paper and digital if possible. Furthermore, if you have children, make your plans and proxy designation clear to each one of them to save them from agonizing disputes. Consider the right time to have these conversations with your family based on your unique family dynamic and set a time for that discussion.

Not sure how to start the conversation? Print this article and say, “I was reading this, and it made me think. Can you all read it too and then we can talk?” Legally documenting your wishes can provide your loved ones with peace, structure and protection at a time when they might have their head in their hands, saying, “I don’t know what to do.” Give them the strength and confidence that helps them take the actions you want taken.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to talk about end-of-life arrangements with aging loved ones

By Karen Garcia

Amy Pickard wants you to talk about death. Specially, she wants you to make your healthcare planning and end-of-life arrangements known to your loved ones.

She knows that talking about death is going to make most people squirm. But the Southern Californian, who runs the end-of-life consulting company Good to Go!, says an awkward but respectful conversation now lessens the grief of a loss when the inevitable happens and allows people to honor a deceased loved one’s wishes.

“I tell adult children to tell their parents, ‘Hey, I’m getting organized with all my advance planning, and I just realized that if I don’t know what I want, you guys certainly wouldn’t know,’” she said. “‘And then I thought if something happens to you guys, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do, and that terrifies me.’”

For some people, it comes from a fear of dying, said author Cameron Huddleston. She said having to talk about end-of-life arrangements feels like being forced to think about mortality.

“However, avoiding the subject doesn’t mean you can avoid the inevitable,” she said. “It just means that you probably won’t have a plan for your death, and you’ll make things harder for those you leave behind.”

Why we need the death talk

Pickard and other advocates for end-of-life planning find that sharing their personal experiences helps normalize the conversation. Pickard shares with clients her experience of grieving the loss of her mother, who died unexpectedly at age 67.

“So I’m in the wilderness of grief, and at the same time I had to suddenly be an accountant, a florist, a detective, a travel agent, an estate appraiser and just all these things. And I was none of those things,” she said.

Her mom didn’t leave any instructions or wishes. Pickard described the work of wrapping up her mother’s life as overwhelming emotional labor.

In the midst of grieving a parent’s death, you might also have to plan the memorial, end monthly magazine subscriptions and notify others of their death. It’s not easy to juggle these tasks or final wishes if you don’t know what someone wants or where their information is stored.

That’s compounding grief with tasks that are frustrating in the best of times. To avoid it, you’ll have to have a difficult conversation that a parent might not be ready for. Asking if your parent would prefer to be buried or cremated (or something else entirely) could elicit responses like “I’m not that old” or “Why, are you trying to get rid of me?” No, you aren’t, but you can’t be their advocate without knowing what they want.

“It’s OK to acknowledge that the topic is uncomfortable, but you could say that you would be even more uncomfortable making arrangements for them without their input,” Huddleston said.

What do you do when someone dies?

Because we find death so hard to talk about, there are probably lots of things people wonder but don’t know. We have answers.

Not having a parent’s healthcare wishes and end-of-life instructions could leave a child wondering whether they made the right decisions.

It can also be an overwhelming experience to sort through a person’s belongings for information.

When Pickard’s mother died, she had no directions to follow. The minute she arrived at her mother’s condo in Chicago to cancel the utility bills and take care of other death duties, Pickard realized that she didn’t know the name of the electric company that kept the lights on.

“I would have given anything to talk to my mom again,” she said. “Not to tell her I loved her, but to get her Wi-Fi password.”

At the end of the day, having this information at the ready allows people to focus on love, Pickard said — how much that person was loved and how much people loved them.

This future peace of mind extends to the person who made their end-of-life wishes known. Pickard says these instructions aren’t just mundane bill canceling. For an adult child, it can be the last time a mother, father or guardian takes care of them.

Huddleston added, “Think of letting your family know what your final wishes are as a gift — your final gift to them. You’ll make it easier for them during a difficult time by having a detailed plan that they can follow.”

Starting the conversation

There isn’t one right way to approach this conversation. It really depends on whom you are talking with.

If you know your person doesn’t like to be taken by surprise, give them a heads up, said Kate DeBartolo of the Conversation Project, an initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. For example, DeBartolo said, if you’re planning a two-week visit with your parent, let them know beforehand that this topic is on your mind and that you would like to talk about it with them.

This gives the person the opportunity to think about what they want if they haven’t already.

You can sit down and talk about it over coffee or sprinkle it into everyday conversation when it feels natural.

If you’re watching a TV show or movie that depicts a funeral, that could prompt the conversation. You could say, “That made me realize I’m not sure of what you would want in that situation” or “Do you agree with the decision that character made for their parent?” DeBartolo said.

It could be a one-on-one conversation or it could be done with several people.

“I heard a woman who said she made desserts for her family at Thanksgiving and she held them all hostage and said, ‘No pumpkin pie until you tell me how you want to die,’” DeBartolo said. “And everybody would go around the table and talk about it, and that worked for her family.”

Having the conversation

Before you broach the subject, DeBartolo wants you to keep in mind the following:

  • Your questions won’t be solved with one conversation. The more you discuss it, the easier it will be for someone to talk about and share their thoughts.
  • Don’t wait until the end of someone’s life to talk about their wishes. There’s a misconception that this conversation should happen with older adults. DeBartolo argues that everyone over 18 should get their arrangements in order or at least start talking about it. Keep in mind that the information will need to be updated whenever you move, get married, divorced or have a child.
  • Don’t start the conversation with financial questions. You might give a person the wrong impression — that you only care about their money.
  • Be an active listener. The person you’re talking with might not give you a straight answer. DeBartolo said a grandmother might say that she wants “home” to be a part of her end-of-life care. Ensuring that Grandmother is at home might not be feasible, but “home” could mean having home-cooked meals, living in a facility that allows her cat or having personal effects with her.

Lastly, when you’re ready to reach out to someone, remember to frame the conversation with compassion. This doesn’t have to be a painful talk, DeBartolo said. It can be loving, a time to share memories.
In the conversation, Huddleston said, find out the following information at the very least:

  • How the person wants their remains handled. If burial is their choice, ask if a plot has been purchased or where they would prefer to be buried.
  • What type of memorial service they want, including music choices and who will speak.
  • The names and contact information of the people they would like to be notified of their death.
  • Information for the obituary.
  • The location of wills, trusts and any life insurance policy.
  • A list of assets and accounts, including things like the names of their utility companies — and their computer login and Wi-Fi information.
  • Any specific instructions for how they want heirs to handle their inheritance.
  • Arrangements for children or pets.

Some people will never want to talk out loud about this, and DeBartolo said that’s OK too. Let them know you’re open to hearing how they’d like the end of their life handled in any way they feel comfortable communicating it. If they can send you an email or a text of a few instructions or tell you where their important documents are, that can be enough.

Resources

The Conversation Project has a free starter guide and focuses on end-of-life healthcare.

Good to Go! sells a “departure file” and offers consulting services in a private or group setting. The latter is called “Good to Go! Parties,” an upbeat gathering to talk, eat, drink and fill out the departure files.

CaringInfo, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, has guides and resources to help clarify the difference between hospice and palliative care or what you need to create an advance directive.

International End-of-Life Doula Assn. has a directory of doulas who can assist with advanced-care planning.

Death Cafes, in-person or online, are group-directed discussions of death with no agenda, objective or theme. It’s a discussion group and not grief support or counseling.

The California Office of the Attorney General has an end-of-life care checklist, resources including Medicare information, an advance healthcare directive checklist and more.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Less Than Half of U.S. Adults Have Wills or Advance Healthcare Directives

By Laurnie Wilson

Death or medical emergencies are never topics that are easy to address. However, a last will or testament can make a difference in the way that one experiences aging, as well as how families grieve in the aftermath of a deceased loved one. Gallup findings from 2021 show that less than half of U.S. adults had a will at the time. Where do Americans stand today on last wills, as well as living wills and advance healthcare directives?

Around 4-in-10 Have Last Wills, More Are Planning On It

New CivicScience data show that the percentage of U.S. adults with wills is still less than half – 38% of Americans currently have a last will and testament detailing property and asset rights after death. However, half of respondents plan to create one in their lifetimes, and 22% plan to make one in the next 12 months. If that were to happen, over 50% of Americans would then have a will by this time next year.

As it turns out, last wills are most common among:

  • Adults aged 65+: 61% have a will, compared to 46% of those aged 55-64; 35% of those aged 35-54; and 22% of those aged 18-34.
  • Homeowners: 49% have a will, compared to 23% of renters.
  • High-income earners: the higher the annual household income, the more likely someone is to have a will.

Age 65 and up appears to be when most Americans are likely to create a will for their financial assets. Less than half of adults under age 65 currently have a will, but between 20-25% plan on creating one in the next 12 months. To no one’s surprise, adults aged 18-34 are the most likely to not plan on making a will (16%), although 62% foresee creating one at some point in the future.

Additionally, attorneys are the most popular option when it comes to the process of preparing a will. More than half of U.S. adults said they used an attorney to prepare their will, while 17% used an online site such as LegalZoom or Free Will, and 34% either wrote their own will or used other means (n=2,202). However, adults aged 34 and younger showed a high rate of using online sites (28%) compared to an attorney (36%). Legal document preparation websites and digital services are likely to become increasingly popular over the traditional use of an attorney as the U.S. population grows older.

Living Wills Are Alive and Well

A living will allows individuals to state their healthcare preferences in the case that they are unable to communicate them at a future date. More than a third of Americans report having this type of advance medical directive (34%), slightly lower than the percentage of those with last wills. Over a quarter (26%) say they plan on creating a living will in the near future.

The data suggest that knowledge of this type of advance medical directive is surprisingly high, as just 7% of adults say they are unfamiliar with a living will and 47% are planning to create one at some point in life. Adults aged 65+ are once again the most likely to already possess a living will, but adults across the board demonstrate a high interest in creating one, including 52% of adults aged 18-34.

Interestingly, 24% of Americans have either a designated financial or healthcare power of attorney, and an additional 20% say they have both (n=3,927).

Americans Are Planning for Their Futures

Of course, legal documents aren’t the only aids Americans may turn to in order to ease the burden of their passing. For some, life insurance answers the question of how to ensure your family is prepared in the event of your death.

As of 2023, 57% of U.S. adults say they have a life insurance policy, the same percentage as in 2022. And as the data show, those who have life insurance are highly likely to have a last will or to be planning to create one if they haven’t already. That said, a significant portion of people without a life insurance policy and not intending to secure one currently have a last will (49%), but they are also the least interested in creating one in the future.

Finally, data show those who have a will or plan to create one are more optimistic about the future than those who never plan to create one. So while some may view end-of-life preparation as a sign of pessimism, perhaps sentiments are changing, as many Americans plan to take steps for the future.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘I see the world through corpse-colored glasses,’ says popular mortician, author and YouTuber Caitlin Doughty

— Caitlin Doughty will be in Fargo to speak at Thursday’s Humanities North Dakota event, A Brave Conversation About Death.

Author and YouTuber Caitlin Doughty incorporates humor and history to discuss death and the funeral business.

By John Lamb

When she was eight years old, Caitlin Doughty saw a child fall to its death at a shopping mall and was immediately ushered away and encouraged not to talk or think about it.

“That was a pretty defining moment of my life. I was scared of death,” Doughty says. “We didn’t have the vocabulary for it, the safe area to hold fears. I just had to deal with it.”

041823.F.FF.CAITLINDOUGHTY_2
Caitlin Doughty’s first book, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory”.

She may have not had the means to express her questions and concerns as an 8 year-old, but 30 years later she’s written three books and created a popular YouTube series all about death.

The mortician, author and YouTuber is the guest of Humanities North Dakota for a sold-out event Thursday night at the Avalon Event Center.

So what is, as the event is called, a “Brave Conversation About Death”? Doughty says she will come warm up the crowd, plant some food for thought on the topic, then leave the stage to let the audience talk among itself about death. She’ll then return to the stage and follow-up with a discussion.

“If you grew up in America, we don’t have death literacy, a safe way to talk about death. We were never taught how to do it,” she says, though she adds that over the last decade, things have gotten better.

“With the internet, people are not comfortable not knowing something,” she says.

In the mid-2000s she wanted to learn more about the funeral industry and got a job in a crematory then attended school for a mortuary science program and graduated as a certified mortician.

Her real work had just begun. Doughty saw things in the funeral industry that could be changed and started The Order of the Good Death, which advocates for reforming attitudes and practices around death, funerals and mourning.

In 2012 she started the YouTube series “Ask a Mortician,” which features her addressing questions people may have about death and funerals in an often entertaining way. The show quickly attracted a following among the general public and now has 1.96 million subscribers, thanks to episodes like “Morbid Minute: Coffins vs. Caskets” and “ Preparing Severely Decomposed Bodies for a Viewing”.

Between the YouTube videos and her books, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory,” “From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death” and “Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death” Doughty has developed a following. She’s heard of people dressing like her for Halloween (“The hair is low hanging fruit,” she says, referring to her signature dark bangs) and even had a drag queen parody her in a video.

“I think I have such a specific advocacy that there’s not a cult of personality,” she says, adding that followers who share her stance on funeral reform are called “Deathlings”.

Still, the segments drew criticism from the old guard in the funeral industry.

“There was discomfort and anger that I’m doing it in this medium and talking about a different future for the industry,” Doughty says. “Most funeral directors believe that the way they provide for the families is the right way.”

But Doughty says changing some practices can help us have a better experience with death and mourning. In particular, she feels the family should have the option to be more involved, mostly by spending time with the deceased.

“For so long we’ve been trained to call the funeral home as soon as someone dies so they can take the body away,” Doughty says. “In reality, death is not an emergency. Your mom is dead now and will still be dead in two days. You’re allowed to take the time you need to process. Being present with a dead body is the simplest and scariest thing to do, but without fail people have an incredible experience.”

She adds that with the exception of an extremely rare case like someone dying of Ebola, “it’s perfectly safe to be around the dead.”

People may wonder what those in the funeral industry were like as kids and Doughty says she wasn’t so different from others her age, though she was a bit of a goth kid.

“A lot of funeral directors held funerals for their pets. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t morbid. I wasn’t Wednesday Adams,” she says. “I was always interested in death as a cultural thing. I see the world through corpse-colored glasses.”

So what does someone who spends all of their time talking about death have planned for her own funeral? While she’s made some plans, she’s still undecided about what will happen to her body. For years she’d wanted a simple, green, or natural burial, to be wrapped in a sheet and buried in a hole in the ground to allow for easier decomposition. After learning more about the practice of human composting, she’s becoming more interested in that.

“I definitely want people to spend time with my dead body in my own house,” she says. “Put flowers on my body, have something to eat or drink and just hang out with me.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The ‘death checklist’

— Choosing your agents

OK, maybe the ‘life checklist’ sounds better. Either way, this starts a whole series of reports to get us ready for the end.

By Jason Wheeler

Show of hands: Who is ready to die? OK, that certainly doesn’t sound appealing.

So, as we do a whole series of reports about preparing for future eventualities, we’ll change the original idea from ‘The Death Checklist’ to ‘The Life Checklist’.

That makes sense anyway because preparing your finances for after you die is a part of life. And it’s a critical part for the people you leave behind.

Let’s start with the care you get that may keep you from dying right now.

Texas has long led the nation in the number of people who are uninsured. It’s a good idea to have health insurance in some form. Because if things go really wrong for you health-wise, it gets costly fast. The average hospital bill in Texas went up 38% from 2016 to 2020. The costs can be an onerous burden even if you are covered. But especially if you are not, those bills can quickly diminish the assets you might have been planning to leave behind to loved ones.

Choosing someone to make your health care decisions if you cannot

Regardless of your insurance situation, if you end up needing treatment, it may help you and those who care about you to designate someone now to be your agent with a medical power of attorney.

Some recommendations say if you are married you should fill out one of these forms too, even if the agent you name is your spouse.

In addition to filling out the form, you discuss your medical wishes with your designated medical power of attorney in case something happens to you, and you are unable or incompetent anymore to make your medical wishes known to healthcare providers.

Make sure the person you designate is someone you trust…and that it is someone who makes good decisions under pressure (and may be able to withstand pressure from other family members who might want something for you that goes against your wishes).

In this document you can limit the decisions your agent can make, you can allow it to go on indefinitely or put an expiration date on it, and you can choose alternate agents in case your agent dies or is incapacitated with you. You can also subsequently revoke this document and make a new one if you choose.

Choosing someone to handle your financial affairs if you cannot

If you want to designate the same person or another person to also handle your financial affairs, and make those decisions when you cannot, that’s going to require another document.

Whoever you select to handle your financial affairs if you are unable to, you want to make sure you really trust the person.

If you select this person to have what is called a durable power of attorney, they can make decisions about a lot of different things involving your money. On the form, you can initial the things they can do regarding your money, your possessions, your real estate, investments, social security, retirement, and other things…even your digital assets and content of electronic communications.

You can also limit or extend their powers. And you get to decide when the durable power of attorney begins.

You can also opt for co-agents and decide if they work together or work independently on your behalf. This would be in effect until your death. But you can revoke it, too.

If that seems like too much there are also limited powers of attorney for things like selling an automobile or dealing with your taxes.

You can also read more about powers of attorney here and here.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!