Can I Sign New Hampshire Travel Agency Agreement

Can i document type sign travel agency agreement new hampshire

afternoon everybody this is Jonathan Rozier executive director for CS and I and I want to welcome you all to our webinar series today's presentation is on guardianship and we're really pleased to have an butan halfback from the law firm of beauty Hoffman bobster and her partner Judith Jones who's going to be helping to provide all of you with information on guardianship we're really excited to be able to continue to offer our educational series and this is now I think the third in our series we've got additional webinars planned for the next couple of months and we'll be sending out information about that after today's webinar just before we get started I want to point out a few things about the webinar first we we ask that all participants in the webinar stay on mute or your microphones so that we don't have any interruption during the formal presentation and I just want to point out a few features of the Xoom webinar application that will help us as we go along we're intending to hold all questions until the end of the webinar and if time allows we will answer them all as they come in if you if you do have a question the best way to get that to us is to move your mouse over the bottom of your screen until you see an icon for Q&A click on that icon and a new window will open up that'll allow you to type in a question when you when you submit that question it'll come to us and we'll you know gather all the questions together it's likely that if you have a question about something somebody else does as well so all questions are welcome and so then we will have those questions here and be able to pose those to our presenters today if for some reason we're not able to answer everybody's questions in the time that we have allotted for the webinar we'll be happy to respond to them in writing afterwards and if you have an unanswered question or for some reason you're having trouble with the Q&A feature you can email it to Heather young and that's H young Y oung at CS and i.org we'll send all participants a brief survey after the webinar and we do ask that you provide us feedback so we can continue to improve the quality and content of our part of our webinar series for your sake so without further ado I will introduce to you and butan Hoff who will kick off our presentation today okay and like the video piece doesn't have to be honor it does right okay great all right hello everyone this is a mutant huh and as we mentioned I'm here with Judith Jones and Judith is actually going to be starting the webinar today and here she is hi everyone I'm I'm very happy to be here and actually also excited I got it was a video and audio and we happened to have chocolate in front of us so we're having some comfort up in our end so let's start with it and Anne and I are going to do today is we're going to look at what happens at age 18 we're going to look at one hypothetical individual named Sam and considerations made it about Sam and whether he needs a guardianship and so I'm going to talk about alternatives to guardianship then we'll look at guardianship in more detail or walk through the facts about guardianship in different scenarios and finally aunts going to end and she's going to look at the importance of having future written guidance for your your loved one your child for care in the future so let me start off really by talking about age 18 and why this is so important and can be just a birthday but really age 18 in New Hampshire an individual becomes an adult and automatically that individual is presumed to have capacity to make decisions and those decisions are about all life events and if we now introduce our friend Sam Sam just turned 18 and he's still in school and let's look at what kind of inherent rights Sam would have at age 18 those would be to make his own choices about where to live where to travel healthcare decisions how to spend money how to take care of his body so all those things become the right of Sam when he turns 18 in some situations there's a harder question to ask is Sam able to handle his personal medical decisions and his finances could Sam be vulnerable to others so why don't we take a look at our hypothetical Sam and in this situation we've got Sam and he's living at home he has disabilities he could apply for SSI Supplemental Security income we know Sam spends his money quickly we also know that Sam's a generous guy and he shares freely with his friends he's just very generous now because Sam turned 18 what's happened automatically is school officials can't speak to Sam's parents without his permission same thing with a medical provider Sam's parents need Sam's permission to speak to the medical provider also if somebody's applying for benefits if Sam wanted benefits and the parent wanted to assist they need Sam's they need Sam's permission this can be a little bit of a shock and a little bit of a concern and just needs some attention and careful thought in Sam's case what we have is the example of he has decided to go for his driver's license he wants to do it and all folks around doctors and family agree that he shouldn't be driving now there may be other scenarios in a hypothetical Sam that are similar so what we're looking at what are the issues that could come about at age 18 but this is a picture of our Sam and we want to think about well what what do we do and how can Sam be helped so before considering this is an butan off before considering filing for guardianship it's important to think of what other alternatives there might be so if if one of the issues is is that Sam really shouldn't be handling his own income like a supplemental security income check or social security disability insurance check then someone can apply to become the representative payee with the Social Security Administration and that could address that specific issue sometimes it's a matter of simply adding a name to a bank account so that there's another signatory to the bank account and then someone else is monitoring what's happening with the money and the next thing we really want to talk about our advanced directors now.i we at our last seminar we did talk about advance directives at length but we were really focusing on your own estate planning but what everybody over the 18 over the age of 18 should be thinking about at this point we're really talking about well what if your child turns 18 how can you step in to help that person and maybe going to court isn't isn't the best alternative so with an advanced directive this is a way for Sam to make a decision about who's going to help him handle certain things and in order to even consider this an alternative Sam has to have the requisite mental capacity and he needs to be able to identify people that he trusts that could assist him with various things whether it's health care decisions are financial then if those are there he may be able to consider this as an option so as a reminder powers of attorney we have financial and health care and and one thing we want to talk about in this series is also that you could have a very limited power of attorney for something like education you can have it very directed towards educational matters we're going to talk about these concepts of a limited or general power of attorney the fact that powers of attorney can be temporary or durable meaning that they last even after someone loses mental capacity and we're going to talk about the concepts of springing versus being effective immediately so the purpose of any power of attorney document is that you're authorizing someone else to make decisions for you so the person who is signing the document is known as the principal so if you're if the hypothetical Sam is has the mental capacity to sign a power of attorney document and understand it then he is the principal of that document and the person that he is naming to help is the attorney in fact or the agent one thing about powers of attorney is that they are revocable and this has you know this concerns quite a lot of parents actually they think that maybe their child has the ability to sign a document and understand a document like this but then they recognize that that person could just get mad at them tomorrow and maybe revoke it so that's that needs to be thought through carefully but they are revocable the authority of the attorney in fact or agent is completely controlled by what the document itself says no more or no less and if you're over the age of 18 which is what we talked about the last webinar you really should consider executing one of these if if there is the mental capacity to do so so I mentioned the concept of whether a document is limited or general a general power of attorney is designed to encompass virtually any type of financial decision that might arise so it's it's going to cover everything because you can't possibly imagine what every hypothetical situation might be a limited power of attorney would grant authority to accomplish a specific task the authority to you know speak to your therapist to speak to your teachers that you know represent you at certain meetings for you know myself for instance a limited power of attorney might even be to represent me at a closing for real estate when I'm selling a house but I'm going out of state I may need someone to do that for me and I wouldn't want to give that person the power to handle every aspect of my financial life I would want to limit them to a specific task and - but you should feel free to jump in anytime we think I you know want to add something else I do want to talk about the concept of durability when you're when you're planning your own for your own estate planning when somebody is doing this they're they're doing it why they have mental capacity thinking that maybe at some point in the future they will lose their capacity to make decisions and in order for a power of attorney to be useful in that situation it needs to have magical language that says it remains valid when someone loses capacity and that's what the term durable means if it doesn't have that language in it and the principle loses mental capacity and this is often the situation with say a traumatic brain injury or developing dementia or some other progressive illness then the the power of attorney is no longer valid so the next concept is the difference between a document that is springing and a document that goes into effect immediately when we use the term springing we're saying that within the document itself it explains when it's going to go into effect because it's waiting for a specific event to happen so you know in a jet in a common scenario as you're waiting for there to be a lack of capacity so we'll go over this specifically with a with healthcare powers of attorney but financial powers of attorney can also include that sort of springing language a power of attorney that goes into effect immediately means that the agent doesn't have to prove that the the principal lacks mental capacity whether it's to schools or financial institutions before acting so it's a personal decision that someone has to make as to whether they're their particular document will be springing or immediate you think it's fair to say that more recently with financial powers of attorney what appears to be more popular are not the springing powers of attorney but what appear to be the more popular trend is to be a general durable power of attorney they're certainly most you know more useful with with basic estate planning and I have had a few clients in the past that have insisted upon springing powers and they've also generally been people that have had some form of mental illness that has a schizophrenic or you know type of component to it but yes that's very it's helpful not to have the springing language because otherwise you're constantly having to prove that this person lacks mental capacity when you're using it because this is Jonathan routier and I just want to jump in real quick because I know we've got a few people join us after we started your on the csfi webinar series and today's topic is guardianship although we're covering other forms of substituted decision making such as powers of attorney right now if you have a question please feel free to use the Q&A feature of the webinar platform just all you have to do is move your mouse over the bottom of your screen the tool where I will pop up and you click on Q&A and you can submit a question there thanks and I'll give you back to Judith and Mia all right so again the with a financial power of attorney document you're authorizing someone to make financial decisions this could be signing contracts and paying bills filling out paperwork to obtain public benefits anything you know it's very very broad it covers anything but it could include funding a trust that you might have including a special special needs trust that we'll be talking about later so you want it designed very broadly to cover many situations with a limited power of attorney your your really again you're naming somebody to be involved in decision making but you're limiting it to something specifically where we see this used a lot is for educational situations so a child turns 18 they're presumed to have the ability to make all of their own educational decisions now and yet maybe they really need you had a an IEP meeting maybe they certainly might need your help shading with teachers and to obtain the the different kinds of help that they might need or filling out even financial aid applications so you can generally serve as an advocate but this this has been a very useful tool this this slide is actually missing its language as well but a durable power of attorney for health care and living will is a as a written document and the the person signing it again the principal appoints an agent to make healthcare decisions at a time when he or she can't do so what's interesting about this document is that it is it's not effective until a doctor declares that you lack mental capacity so by definition it is a springing power of attorney document many people think that when they have a child sign a durable power of attorney for health care that they then are in a position to make decisions for their child but if they have the mental capacity to sign this document then they have the mental capacity to keep making their own decisions so it's really not the best mechanism if you if if you need to be involved in health care decision making that's suggesting that the person doesn't have the mental capacity to make those decisions another important document is is HIPPA that's the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act which is one this Act protects privacy in your medical records and it prevents doctors and other providers from just giving that information out freely so if if the child or you could put yourself in this situation if you want to be able to share medical records with someone else today you know without any for mental incapacity then you need to fill out one of these HIPAA release forms they can be very key this doesn't give someone the authority to make a decision it gives somebody access to medical information and permission to speak to doctors so when considering whether Sam are hypothetical Sam can take advantage of you know substitute a decision making by using powers of attorney the first thing is can't Sam understand the nature of the document does Sam understand the role and appreciate the role of an agent as maybe taking over some of these decisions the Sam really understand that the power of the agent might have with this as well as the limitations on powers so there's not a specific test given to figure out whether Sam has the capacity or not when an attorney meets with an individual you know we'll ask a whole variety of questions to make sure that that's this hypothetical Sam understands the document in front of them you know attorneys simply won't have somebody sign a document unless they feel very comfortable about the ability to understand it and certainly you can they may not understand every word in the document it's making sure they understand the concept and the different aspects of it and making sure you know who you're appointing and why they are appointing a particular person so we' l be moving on now to talking about guardianship and you know what is once someone turns 18 as we mentioned that person is adult and presumed to have no capacity and only a court can declare that an adult lacks capacity and needs a guardian a a doctor doesn't make that decision a doctor is evidence in a guardianship action a doctor can activate a healthcare power of attorney but can't make it you know doesn't decide that the person lacks mental capacity so I I think what this is useful today is laying out alternatives and then walking through guardianship because what we find in our practice is the decision about what way to get support for decision making varies tremendously by individual and it's a very personal decision so I think what's great is we're walking through some of the alternatives the benefits the downsides and now let's take a look at a guardianship and let's say that Sam can't sign a power of attorney he doesn't he doesn't understand what the document says or you have a power of attorney but Sam could still be vulnerable to influence of others and it may be difficult doors into a contract and it may be difficult to undo that without a guardianship so let's just look at the role of a guardian and the end guardianship so first we're going to start really basic what is a guardianship and so the guardianship is a statutory creature there are statutes in place that give the court authority to create a relationship between two individuals you have a guardian who's the decision-maker and you have initially a proposed board and the proposed Ward once the court has determined that individual lacks official capacity to make decisions then the guardian becomes the decision-maker so we're looking at the court and the court has to make a finding and the court has to rule that that individual lacks capacity so we're going to take a little bit of time now to look at that whole definition of what is incapacity so Ann had mentioned that this is not a medical decision but it's a legal decision and in New Hampshire we have really what many advocates have said is a model statute in capacities measured by functional limitations meaning that there's proof that the ward would suffer substantial harm due to an inability to meet basic needs and those basic needs are food clothing shelter health care decision safety or manage finances so to get to incapacity we have to have proof in New Hampshire and this proof is established by showing there are some functional limitations that this person has and also the impact of the functional limitations on that person's life so a functional limitation is it's a behavior or condition that impairs the ability to meet basic needs again activities of daily living food shelter healthcare so in an example of a functional limitation let me make this a little more concrete if let's say there is no understanding of math III let's say it's me and I have no understanding of math that might be true but every day we do test it every day but what we're looking at is really basic understanding for life skills my math is that I'll confess but I can read a bank statement and I can't count change so maybe my my shortcomings in math are not going to affect my daily life so talking more about functional limitations we want to look at well how do you prove a functional limitation to the court and what the court is really looking at are least specific very specific examples they want they don't want to get a paper from a doctor that says Sam has a diagnosis of autism they want tangible examples of in Sam's everyday life is there example of how his functional limitation impacted his health our safety and we need those examples within something within 20 days of filing the petition and something within six months there's everything within circle everything within six months so something that happened more than six months ago it's irrelevant so if we look back at Sam and leeteuk we introduced santim what we said is gee Sam is very generous he'll give away the shirt on his back and so what you're looking at is G is Sam the kind of guy who are you talking about G he just shares snacks with his friends or has Sam given away his cell phone he needs his bike is transportation he's given that away and when he gets birthday money it's gone because his friends know how to get it from him so that means that's not isolated right sir so when you're looking at these functional limitations you're looking at what is not a functional limitation and there's an says this can't be just one isolated example so what we have is let's say Sam's excited it's snowing he wants to see a friend he doesn't put on his coat he rushes out to go see his friend that's very different from someone who needs the help of parent to tell them gee this is how you have to dress to go out so you're really looking at the examples we're talking about for functional impairments is it just a one-time thing also what wouldn't count is is it just due to a lack of resources so for example I'm not say I'm not meeting my basic housing need and I'm not meeting it because I lost my job and I don't have the funds to pay rent well that's different than I gave my money away and I really didn't understand I had to pay my rent on a monthly basis or someone who can't make change or or understand you know basic now right so so in this we're looking at the court being careful we want to hear about functional limitations we want to hear evidence that occurred within the last six months and one instance incidents within the last 20 days we can't have it isolated it can't just be a lack of resources and the other caveat is this act is it the product of an informed decision so when we look at informed decisions for saying gee the individual has considered the situation they understood the choices they made the choice voluntarily and I understood the consequences of my choice so we give another example so let's say I'm not going to take a medication it's been prescribed I don't want to take it I'm not taking it because it gives side effects but I'm willing to talk to the physician about maybe an alternative how does that differ from I've decided all medicine is poison and I'm not taking any medicine ever so it's looking at is that choice something that's I do I have the capability of thinking through and coming to a conclusion the other caveat which I love is everyone has a right to make stupid decisions yeah we you're one of the things that is often used is you know someone deciding just to eat Twinkies not a good decision but they understand they have a lot of choice and they just make a decision that way so sometimes you can't force people to eat well so let's let's go a little bit deeper into the guardianship process and what what that looks like to start and it is starting with filing a lawsuit and in New Hampshire it's called a petition now all of this is online and there's a lot of great information on the New Hampshire probate court web page so if you just google New Hampshire probate court guardianship we're going to get a lot of good information and a lot of food question and answers and a peek at the forms that you'd have to fill out to do that it remembering that this process really is by definition its adversarial meaning that the proposed Lord is going to get an attorney it's going to be appointed by the state right yep the part of the petition automatically if there's a guardianship let's say against me I'm automatically going to get an attorney I may have to pay for the attorney but if I have no funds the state's gonna pay for the attorney and what's involved in the guardianship proceeding is putting on a case and putting on the case involves it may involve medical records it may involve family testimony it may involve provide provider testimony and as we go through this we'll look at the different components of that a question that sometimes comes up is well I want it seek guardianship do I need an attorney to do that and I think that is a case-by-case decision and as an attorney I'm always looking at would it benefit you maybe you don't need an attorney but would it benefit you to have a one-time consult with an attorney to help you make that decision and maybe walk you through the process so in New Hampshire when we talk about guardianship and you saying as as the slide says it's not easy and it shouldn't be and say it shouldn't be because under guardianship a lot of rights are being taken away you're having a decision-maker and so we want to put protections in the legal system to make sure we've given this proposed board the chance to show whether or not he or she needs a guardian so part of the protections are there's a legal presumption that any individual who's a proposed Ward has capacity we're going to go into court and we are going to presume that and the person wanting guardianship then has to rebut that presumption they have the burden of proof they have to go in and show gee there's a need for the guardianship and then we standards of proof in the law and for the guardianship we've ever have a very high standard and that's the highest standard on the legal profession has it's a beyond a reasonable doubt and other standards you might have heard of our by a preponderance of the evidence are more likely than not and here we have beyond a reasonable doubt so this system may at first be could be upsetting to parents really feeling challenging because maybe the parent has knows the child the best feel strongly they can take good care of the child and it can just feel it could feel a little insulting or a frontof to half the team now I have to go into court and show what I've been the best at this job so usually when we have clients who are going forward with this it's just preparing them for that that kind of proceeding I do think it can help to think of yourself in the situation if somebody is claiming that you lack mental capacity and you're pretty sure that no you have mental capacity you'd want them to have to come forward with significant proof because otherwise they're they're taking away your ability to decide where you're going to live and how you're using your money so it's this is why we have such a high level proof and we have to say that we have had cases and I know I'm thinking of one case that an had particularly where we had a client with capacity and had to put on a case to preserve that person's right so it's a system that can feel awkward but there's a basis for it the other piece I wanted to mention that can feel hard for parents is knowing that gee my child is going to have an attorney appointed to them and it's good to clarify the role of that attorney the role of the attorney is to follow the wishes of the client and this was set in New Hampshire finally settled by a case called Henderson and it's clear under that case if I'm the attorney representing a proposed Ward I can't recommend what I think is best for my client I have to do what my client tells me to do and I I give an example we represent proposed wards we represent petitioners I had a case representing a petitioner who clearly absolutely needed a guardian not a petitioner gonna pop I'm sorry proposed Ward and this proposed Ward absolutely needed a guardian and I knew that but he absolutely didn't want a guardian so my job at that point was to work with him to put on a case to do what my client wishes so more on the the types of guardianship there's different types of guardianship Sande different scopes of guardianship so in the petition itself when you fill out the form you've got to make a decision is this guardianship going to be over the person only and that that relates to health care education travel where to live whether I vote whether I marry by contrast there's guardianship over the estate and the estate really looks at finances you can ask for guardianship over both or you can ask for guardianship over over just one of those areas so the next slides what we're looking at is back to Sam and we're wondering gee I wonder if he's going to agree to the appointment of a guardian he has a court-appointed attorney who's going to advise him will he agree or maybe not of jack'd and again this slide talks about well what's the role of that legal counsel what how sam asserts his rights is really going to drive how the hearing functions so often in Guardian ships what we find is the proposed Ward meets with the attorney the proposed Ward has no objection actually I've had a proposed Ward who really welcome to guard in then I've had many like that many 18 year old kids recognize that they they really need the continued help of a parent and in that kind of case what might happen in court is going into court the judge may start with counsel for the proposed Ward and go off the bat asking if there's an objection and if there's not an objection then the judge may move to petitioners the petitioners still have to put on a case but there are some ways that judges can be thoughtful because let's look at this we have to put on a case we have to show that this person lacks capacity how does the proposed Ward standing there feel about that we have some judges on the bench who were very very thoughtful about that I've had judges ask the petitioners just to affirm the truth of the facts that are contained in the petition there are ways for the council for the proposed war to let them know gee you're going to hear a lot of things but this is just to get the job done it's not all of you the other extreme with hearings you could get where is if you have a proposed Ward who objects to the guardianship and in that case you're going to have to have evidence and you're going to have to bring in you're going to have to have testimony you're going to have to put on a case and the hearings could we've had hearings that last hours and are continued for the next day on this slide is also missing its language so sorry about that but look at thinking about if you're doing a petition for guardianship who should who should service the Guardian and is it is it the parent is it a sibling is it is it a close family member and looking at this it's looking at let's say it's me and I'm a parent I'm gonna ask myself if I serve as guardian would that interfere with my relationship with my child maybe I'd be to have a third party or an agency or an independent guardian make those decisions and it can really depend upon the type of disability and the nature of relationship but so that's another issue to be thought through and to be considered the if we look at how much power does the Guardian have the court the statute says Qi this guardianship has to be the least restrictive intervention meaning that it has to be as limited in scope as possible we want the ward to have as much freedom as possible so when you look at the petition there's are there check boxes how many rights in the check boxes do you want control of and what we're recommending is looking at those check boxes very carefully and thinking through which what can the proposed war do or not do it's ultimately the judge's decision in how broad or narrow the scope of the guardianship is all right so I know that we have a number of questions that have been made so I am going to whip through the rest of these slides I understand that these webinars will be posted and people can look at them again so what what we want you to know as a family member of Sam is that you know Sam best you know you need to provide instructions for future Guardians care providers and trustees because unfortunately none of us are immortal we strongly believe that Sam should be included as an active participant and his wishes should be taken into consideration to the extent possible and it's important to write write everything down you know how is somebody going to know all this information if it's not written down so family information and history let's let's understand the relationships of the people in Sam's life what about prior family medical history how that might impact Sam in the future and for you know we need a history of diagnosis hospitalizations medications who are Sam's doctors before and now important professionals in their life and we're looking again at past and present another important thing are j st what are what are Sam's habits and hobbies and routines you know Sam better than than anyone else you're in fact the only person who will know stress stress relieving techniques who the support system is are there certain buzz words or phrases that set Sam off what are things what behavior might be bad for for Sam then you might have a situation where there actually is in employment history history of day programs what is the preferred living situation that the family would like to see Sam have and are there any educational limitations and goals it's also important to know the government benefits information to maximize medical and financial assistance I apologize that this is not on the slide and what advanced planning did the other family members do is there a does the parent have wills special needs trusts in place as their life insurance what what type of support might Sam be facing when parents have passed away so I did want to point out that we we are a member of this organization called the special needs Alliance is a nationwide listing of attorneys and you can go on their website and sign up for fabulous articles and actually look at a whole catalogue of prior articles in our office also has a newsletter if you wanted to sign up for that on our website so thank you both for for the presentation so far and it's really been there's a lot of things to consider there are different documents different methods for helping somebody navigate through the different types of you know substituted judgment and a lot to think through and just just real quickly for folks we will be sending out the updated slide deck so we apologize that sometimes PowerPoint has a mind of its own and needs a few things out well we have the complete slide deck and we will send that out to everybody who registered for today's webinar and folks have submitted a number of questions really thoughtful questions I'm going to start with a couple of questions that pertain to guardianship and then there are also a couple of questions from the earlier portion of the presentation I was an attorney so the first question here is it really relates to the rights of the that the word has and in particular the process for somebody who has a court-appointed guardian to be able to have the court change that decision or have the person become you know able to resume their own so you're saying this is a shift in place already and you either want to change guardians terminate guardians or the guardianship or limit what what yes and is the guardian and I think for this particular listener today the question is worn around what is the what is the burden of proof that the ward has to provide in order to say to a judge I don't need a guardian any more like good question my recollection is the I don't I may have to check this and then get a correction out by email but my recollection is still that there has to be proof that a guardianship is still necessary that's my recollection that the burden doesn't go on the ward but I think it's worth double-checking because it's a recollection in the back my mind but what we know is in every there's an annual report of the Guardian over the person and that the ward gets a notice informing them they have the right to try to terminate the guardianship so that's something the court sends out at least it sends out once a year so that the ward has that notice and also the Guardian really would have a duty if they believe that the guardianship is not necessary to institute something to terminate the Guardian and this is another thing that will double check but I do believe that if a ward does not think a guardianship is necessary and wants to bring a petition they can ask the court to assign them an attorney again because if they're if they're indigent no so that's that's an important thing to think about terrific and kind of along the same lines is you know we have a participant who's asked if if somebody is appointed a guardian and there's maybe some suspicion that the evidence that was presented around their mental capacity is not fully accurate or somehow elaborated on in a way that's you know that doesn't really seem accurate to or true in that person's circumstances is there a process for the Guardian ship to be removed or ended so if it's if it happened at a hearing I guess you say that it's it's you really want to get all your best information in a be hearing so there's a chance to cross-examine there's you know Hail Mary Mary could be during the hearing saying we need a continuance that there is additional information we didn't expect this witness and we want a continuance to get more information in so the bottom line is the process is the hearing itself initially you know and and if if you then come up with newly discovered evidence that everything was a fraud yeah then I think you file the newly discovered evidence but the whole point of a hearing and the burden being on the petitioner is that the the proposed Ward with an attorney should put forth their best possible case and and say that you know if they have proved that this is you know completely inflated out of proportion and nothing and is accurate that's the time to do it you want to show that those witnesses that are testifying aren't reliable just like any other court case really those really come in from the person who is being proposed as a ward and they're their attorney to be able to you know make sure that the judge is looking at things through an accurate lens and that there's some veracity to the documentation and and Judith is right I mean if you need more time because things came up that you weren't expecting you have the right to ask the judge for more time and you know if the judge doesn't give you more time you have the right to ask the judge to reconsider that decision so there's there's a whole legal process that gives you the right to to put on your case and so we all we have one participant who's wondering about what's the difference between a guardianship and a conservatorship that's a that's a great question so it depends on the state by the way yeah we'll talk about New Hampshire talk about New Hampshire it gets so confusing so in New Hampshire conservatorship is voluntary and I let's say it's me I decide I'm not handling my funds well I can petition the court and ask for a conservator the benefit is the the person acting as my conservator is subject to court oversight but I can terminate that conservatorship when you look at other states that it seems like the word conservator and Guardian are used interchangeably so it gets very very confusing but in at least in New Hampshire we know that guardianship is really what we're talking about something that's not voluntary conservatorship is voluntary and in so for instance in Massachusetts guardianship is over the person and conservatorship is over the estate but they're both what we would call guardianship so New Hampshire is really unusual to have this conservatorship language for you know a voluntary process that lets someone else take over and sort of along those lines and thank you for mentioning you know sort of the out of state regulations if I'm let's say I'm a parent I live in Massachusetts and my child lives in New Hampshire and I want to file for guardianship do I need to file in the state that I reside in where my child lives where the child was always where the child was I know that folks have some questions around public Guardians and whether or not there's a either a separate process for petitioning the court for that type of guardianship or in may be a situation where a person's treatment team or support professionals are you know wondering what you know what would be the best case scenario in terms of who would be appropriate to serve as a guardian yeah there are pub their private Guardians and what we call public Guardians so in New Hampshire there are two agencies that offer public guardianship so one is the office of public Guardian and the other is tri-county cap so they're nonprofits and they serve as organizations and have a team of staff that can serve as guardian and then in New Hampshire they're also a handful of private individuals then who've been approved by the court to serve as Guardians so the court has its short list of individuals it's vetted who can jump in and serve as a private Guardian so sometimes it absolutely makes sense for a family member not to serve as guardian and again that's something that case by case and depending on the circumstances but the procedure is the same it's just that you know in your paperwork you're asking for the Office of Public Guardian to be appointed but generally the Office of Public Guardian should be approached in advance so that you know they're given some information about this person and they agree that to be named and and oftentimes courts there's no suggestion about who would be Guardian and the courts will bring in the office of public Guardian or tri-county cat guardianship services but the procedure is the same it's just how do you notify and find out who who to ask and and how to get appointed and both of those organizations websites have information on their intake process and what it you know freakingly ask questions so it would be a good reference to do some further digging you're a couple of questions around powers of attorney the first is is it is it sound to have DNR or do-not-resuscitate language contained within a living will or power of attorney document well do not resuscitate is actually whatever you put in the document it doesn't it's not the exam as a doctor issuing an order so only a doctor can issue a do not resuscitate order and until that is in your medical chart you know emergency personnel will provide you know resuscitation what the power of attorney document should do is give the principle the person signing the document the ability to decide whether the agent will have the authority to agree to a do not resuscitate order in the future so a doctor can't just issue a do not resuscitate order or doctor needs someone to agree to it and if I lack mental capacity does my agent have the authority to agree to it so that's another very personal decision as to whether you're going to give someone that authority but um you know personally I want my agent to have that authority because I don't know what possibly could be happening to me in my medical future and it may look very very dim I could be a vegetable and I don't you know I want my agent to be able to decide maybe she needs that do not resuscitate order now one place to get good information about health care powers of attorney is the website New Hampshire foundation for healthy communities and they have a wonderful book that walks through the role of the agent and advocacy and a checklist for making decision and these are available at virtually every hospital and nursing home in the state is there any sort of a registry so when somebody files a living will or a DPO a over health care that the emergency room staff can access or is that something that sort of is left to each person or regarding the neck you know in that case to file with local schools there there isn't one national registry there there is an organization I think it's docu Bank that will that you can pay to have your documents you know available like nationally generally speaking we recommend that just because you sign the document you're not done with your job you need to make sure that everyone named as a copy of it you need to make sure you're your primary care and any specialists have a copy of it and and hospitals closest to you and if you travel you should take it with you but there's not one national registry but if somebody is really interested in that they could look into something called donkey bag and there we've heard we've had clients today but they know what hospital they go to in an emergency that they are sending the documents to that hospital great and there's one more question from our audience and this really relates to powers of attorney with respect to educational proceedings question is the word a power of attorney allow me to put during a EP meetings that my child remains in school until the age of 21 d well you designed the power of attorney document to specifically address that so in other words if you want to if the child is signing a an educational power of attorney it's going to be include the ability to represent Sam you know at an IEP meeting and what what does that include that could include exactly what this person is asking so you want to make sure that the the document allows for that you're making that yeah that the document you want the document broad enough to include the possibilities that you're concerned about great great so we're nearing the the end of our webinar time I just want to do a couple of things one is thank everybody who has registered and signed in and participated and submitted questions today I see we I think we've gotten to all of the questions thankfully so that was really well-timed and I just want to kind of remind folks that that one today's presentation is not to be used or considered as legal advice today's information is really for educational purposes only and you know your own circumstances really require you to to consult with professionals so you have an opportunity to really you know spell things out in terms of what your concerns are so certainly feel free to reach out to mutant - monster or you know another state planning or trust attorney that's close to you to you know seek advice the other thing I wanted to mention is that again we will be sending out the updated slide deck to everybody who registered and if you're participating by sharing a stream with somebody else and you were not registered if you would like a copy of the slide deck you can send an email to Heather young at sea s and I and the email address is H young my oung @c s ni org and lastly I just want to thank you and Ann Judith again for coming and sharing your time your talent your information with us and for being able to provide such helpful content really happy to do it great so thanks everybody and we hope that you'll tune in to our next webinar in our series which is going to be in November and I just don't remember the date but if you I'm sorry the 29th of November that will be on it'll be information on neuropsychological testing kind of an overview of when that is appropriate and what some of the results can help to tell you we'll also be working with Ann and her partner's on providing some additional information in future webinars related to special needs trusts and so stay tuned on our website for more information on that again this is Jonathan luthier from CSI and we thank you for listening hope you all have a great great day