Incapacity planning is the set of documents that lets someone you choose handle your money, your medical care, and your daily affairs if illness or injury leaves you unable to decide. Kreisher Marshall & Associates, LLC pairs those documents with life care planning for aging adults.
What Does Incapacity Planning Actually Cover?
Incapacity extends far beyond advanced dementia. A stroke, serious fall, surgical complication, or adverse medication reaction can leave an adult conscious but unable to sign a check or give informed consent. Planning answers questions that might otherwise end up before a judge:
- Who pays your mortgage, property taxes, and insurance premiums
- Who speaks with your doctors and reviews your chart
- Which treatments you accept and which you refuse
- Who handles the property you own jointly with another person
Answers written in advance stay under your control, exactly as you worded them. Answers supplied afterward belong to whoever a court appoints, and that person may read your intentions differently than you would have wanted.
The Durable Financial Power Of Attorney
A financial power of attorney names an agent to pay bills, manage accounts, file tax returns, and handle real estate for you. Pennsylvania documents are presumed durable under 20 Pa.C.S. § 5601.1, so that authority survives incapacity unless the document says otherwise.
Who Can See Your Records And Speak For You?
A health care power of attorney names the person who makes treatment decisions once a physician documents that you cannot. Pair it with a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) release so that person can receive records and speak with hospital staff.
A Living Will Records Your Own Treatment Choices
A living will, also called an advance directive, states what you want if you reach an end-stage medical condition or become permanently unconscious. Your family never has to guess about ventilators, feeding tubes, or resuscitation.
Where Does A Revocable Living Trust Fit?
A revocable living trust holds title to whatever you transfer into it, and it keeps working if you cannot. Your successor trustee takes over management without a court filing, which helps in two common situations:
- Real estate held in more than one state
- A blended family, where account titling alone produces results nobody intended
A trust governs only the assets that are actually retitled into its name. Accounts, vehicles, and paychecks left outside it still rely on your financial power of attorney, so the two documents operate as a matched set.
What Happens Without An Incapacity Plan?
Your family’s remaining option is a guardianship petition filed with the Orphans’ Court Division for the 26th Judicial District, which sits in the Columbia County Courthouse in Bloomsburg. A hearing is public, and the judge, not your family, decides who serves as guardian and how much authority that person receives.
Plan Ahead With Kreisher Marshall & Associates, LLC
Families turn to Kreisher Marshall & Associates, LLC for comprehensive estate planning. Our two Certified Elder Law Attorneys prepare, execute, and update every document your plan requires.
Call (814) 458-6294 or contact us online to meet with our State College team and clearly establish who will have the authority to act on your behalf.