Aging Parents Checklist

Just in time for National Estate Planning Awareness Week, one of my dear friends reached out to me about her aging parents. They were in town for a visit, and she quickly realized that they had some real physical challenges. After years of being mostly self-sufficient, she worried that they do not have their affairs in order. “Do you have a checklist that we can use to help start the process?” Here goes!

Step 1 Have the Hard Conversation NOW Yes, you will be prying, and, in some cases, your parents will resist. Bring your bag of empathy because these conversations can evoke feelings of control, privacy, dignity, shame, fear and lack of confidence.

You may want to start with an icebreaker, like: “I read this interesting article about having hard conversations, and it made me think we should really sit down and talk about your physical and financial security and also what you would like to happen in the future.”

Step 2 Discovery As any loyal viewer of Law & Order knows, discovery is the formal process of exchanging information between parties before a trial begins. For our purposes, this is the period when you assemble documents that will be necessary to provide safety and security for your aging parents. It may be helpful to assemble all of this in a centralized location so siblings can review and update as needed.

Health/Insurance

• List of all medications, including vitamins and supplements

• Medicare information, including plan types and supplemental coverage. I recommend that if your parents agree, that you and/or your siblings get authorization to talk to Medicare directly, if they are enrolled in Parts A and B. You can download an authorization form. (If they use Medicare Advantage and Part D, these plans are private insurers with their own authorization forms.)

• List of all doctors and their contact information. If your parents use health care portals, get their permission to log on so you can see results of all visits.

Financial Information/Documents

If your parents work with a financial advisor or an insurance agent, they should provide you with contact information for those professionals. If they are comfortable doing so, if they granted you permission to receive duplicate statements and/or provide you with the passwords to monitor the accounts.

• Bank, investment and retirement accounts

• Automatic payments with payee information

• Insurance policies (life, long-term care, disability)

• Housing, land and cemetery deeds

• Mortgage and loan accounts

• Vehicle titles

• Partnership and corporate operating agreements

• Marriage licenses, divorce papers, and military discharge forms

• Any existing estate documents and the name and contact information of the attorney who prepared them.

Step 3 Schedule and Prepare for Meeting With a Qualified Estate Attorney

I am old school and believe that it is worth it to hire a qualified estate attorney, especially if there are any complications, like a second marriage, family estrangement, a special-needs family member, a partnership in a small business or significant assets. That said, if your parents’ situation is straightforward, an online service is better than nothing.

With your discovery documents in hand, either you or the attorney needs to ask specific questions, like:

• Are you worried about money?

• Have you thought about what would happen if you needed assistance in the home?

• Do you want to ensure that your assets, including possessions that may have sentimental value, are passed to specific people/family members?

• Are you worried that heirs would squander money that is left to them?

• Do you want to be charitable?

Step 4 Familiarize yourself with estate planning terms

• Will: A document that ensures that assets are passed to designated beneficiaries, in accordance with your wishes. In the drafting process, you name an executor, the person or institution that oversees the distribution of your assets. If your parents die without a will, their state of residence determines who gets what, and the local probate court will take its time and then divvy up their estate according to a preset formula.

• Health Care Proxy: Appointment of someone to make health care decisions on your behalf if you lose the ability to do so.

• Power of Attorney: Appointment of someone to act as your agent in a variety of circumstances, like withdrawing money from a bank, responding to a tax inquiry or making a trade.

• Letter of Instruction: This covers things like the disposition of your remains and your desired funeral arrangements, which can be important if you are choosing something that is contrary to your family’s tradition.

• Trusts: A trust comes in two forms: revocable (changeable) or irrevocable (not changeable). Trust assets avoid probate and can provide a more precise way in which to transfer assets. But in some cases, a trust can overly complicate the process and add to the cost of the estate plan.

• Transfer-on-Death Accounts: Many financial institutions offer the ability to designate a beneficiary of non-retirement bank and investment accounts, which allows ownership of the account to be transferred to the designated beneficiary upon death and generally avoids probate.

Step 5 Communicate the Plan

Once your parents’ estate documents are completed, the executor needs not only copies of the documents but also the names, current addresses and Social Security numbers of all people named in them and contact information for the estate attorney and CPA who will help navigate the process in the future.