Duties before dying: End-of-life plans avoid troubles

Duties before dying

End-of-life plans avoid troubles

By Laura McFarland
Staff Writer

Friday, September 18, 2009

Are you ready to die?

Death is probably one of the least favorite subjects on the planet, and planning for when they die is even worse for many people, said T.W. King, a lawyer in Rocky Mount. But though sickness and death can be uncomfortable subjects not planning for them properly can lead to an emotional and legal mess for a person and his or her family if the worst happens.

“There is a general reluctance to want to discuss issues of mortality because you just basically have to get in touch with your mortality, and the vast majority of people would not want to do that. That is why a lot of people die without wills,” King said.

Many people think that if they have a will, they have covered their end-of-life decisions, said Mark Edwards, a lawyer at Fields & Cooper PLLC in Nashville.

However, a will only covers a person’s possessions after they die, Edwards said. It is rare for him to prepare a will without also urging a client to consider the other documents that deal with end-of-life decisions: a durable power of attorney, a health care power of attorney and a living will.

A durable power of attorney gives authorization to act on someone’s behalf in a legal or business matter if he or she becomes incapacitated, Edwards said. A living will specifies whether a person wishes to have his or her life prolonged through artificial or extreme methods. Neither of these documents is sufficient to handle all other medical decisions that may come up if a person is incapacitated. For that, a person needs a health care power of attorney.

If people are willing to make the effort to ensure what happens to their assets after death, it is worth taking the time to make provisions for their health while they are still alive, Edwards said.

People who are elderly or suffering life-threatening or degenerative diseases usually are the most receptive to talking about end-of-life decisions, much more so than younger- and middle-aged adults, Edwards said. While the issue often is more pressing for the former, the latter still should consider them. Accidents and unforeseen medical problems happen to people of all ages.

The nation learned this with examples such as Terri Schiavo, a 26-year-old Florida woman who was left in a persistent vegetative state after she experienced respiratory and cardiac arrest in 1990. Schiavo did not have a living will, and the fight between family members over whether to take her off life support lasted 15 years, involved numerous court cases and gained national attention. Even President George W. Bush weighed in on the issue.

The reasons people do have these documents vary, Edwards said. For some, especially younger adults, making end-of-life plans is not even on their radar screen. Others have thought about it and keep putting it off, thinking they have plenty of time.

Thelma Phillips of Spring Hope put it off until she was 82. Phillips visited Edwards, her attorney, Wednesday and had him draw up a will, a living will and durable and health care powers of attorney. Prior to that, all she had was a will her husband and she drew up more than 30 years ago when he was still living.

“When you get older, you think of a lot of things that you don’t think about when you are younger, like your time is getting short. I thought about it, but I just didn’t ever take the step forward to go through with it. I wasn’t in the mood to follow through with doing it. That is why I didn’t do it earlier,” Phillips said.

Having completed the paperwork, Phillips said she felt more secure in what would happen to her if she became disabled or mentally incapacitated.

Doing the documents is the beginning, said Gay Joyner, a paralegal with Legal Aid of North Carolina, a free legal services program in Rocky Mount. The documents give people the comfort of knowing their end-of-life decisions are known, but they still need to discuss the wishes with the person they are giving power of attorney to, their doctors and family members. This helps make sure the person’s wishes will be followed.

Not having that knowledge may cause strife in a family as relatives argue over what they think a person would have wanted, Joyner said.

“It puts a lot of burden on the family trying to decide what did they want. They are stuck with a lot of decisions that maybe families haven’t talked about before. Do they want organ donation? Do they want to be put on machines? Even simple things like, do they want to be put on kidney dialysis if they can’t make that decision themselves?” Joyner said.

When people do not share their wishes with family members and doctors and have a legal document that backs them up, it can cause a number of problems, said Armeta Coley, regional ombudsman for the Upper Coastal Plain Area Agency on Aging. From a legal standpoint, if a person does not have a health care power of attorney, the family may be forced to go through a lengthy and possibly expensive court process of having a guardian appointed. That can take years.

“I have seen guardianships where someone other than the family is appointed as guardian. ... The court decides who would be the best person to appoint guardian,” Coley said.

Obviously, a lawyer is going to advocate people having end-of-life documents drawn up as soon as possible, but that does not make the need the need for them any less true, King said.

“Everybody thinks they have time, but occasionally they don’t have time. So, it is better to go ahead and make the decision to prepare these documents and have them sitting there in the place where you keep your other important documents. With that crossed off your list, you don’t have that as a worry in your life,” King said.

http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/features/duties-before-dying-843181.html