Unlocking eSignature Legitimateness for Planning in Australia

How to eSign a document: e-signature legitimateness for Planning in Australia

I was scrolling through YouTube the other day and I came across an old anti- drunk driving commercial uh it's one where there's a guy he's playing with his golden retriever his best bud and then the guy says Hey I'm going out drinking and he walks out the door and then you see several shots of the golden retriever sitting around and waiting and it gets dark and he's waiting and then the sun comes up and the poor dog is still waiting thankfully the guy comes back and says I decided to sleep elsewhere cuz I couldn't drive And the tagline on this one of course was uh for some The Waiting never ended and make a plan to make it home because your friends are counting on you this got me thinking what about pets and estate planning what if that guy hadn't made it home well my name is Gregory Singleton I'm an attorney from signature law and we're here to talk Estate Planning and today is going to be part one of a two-part series on pets and estate planning this week we're going to talk about uh incapacity planning so if you're incapacitated what happens to your pet and the next video we're going to talk about Legacy planning if you pass away what happens to your pet and how do we plan for that so let's uh go back to basics real quick and recap estate planning really covers two periods there could be three but generally we talk about two the first period that we don't cover is when you're alive and have capacity the second is when you're alive and incapacitated and cannot make certain decisions for yourself and the third time is after your death and today we're going to take that middle chunk change which is when you're alive and incapacitated how do we plan to make sure that our pets our family members and friends are taken care of if we are suddenly incapacitated now there's two basic strategies we're going to talk about here uh that are pretty that are Rel quite important as well as a couple miscellaneous things toss in at the end and the first one I want to talk about is something that you all should have which is your healthc care directive this is very simply a provision in your healthc care directive that authorizes someone to be custodian of your pet now remember it's important to have it in the healthc care directive because this is a document that we make sure to distribute to everyone to all of our Healthcare agents we throw it in the GL glove box we keep a copy on ourselves uh when we're traveling um by putting in the healthcare directive this is the last document that someone's going to have uh if you are incapacitated um so we make sure that we put in a temporary Guardian in this case um notably if you are incapacitated and you going to the hospital and they contact your health care agent if it's in the healthc care directive then your Healthcare agent is going to know to contact your neighbor to take care of fluffy now the second strategy that we have is one that isn't employed very often but I started using a little bit more and more as time goes on it's a durable Financial or durable power of attorney for Pet Care Now as you should be aware uh Powers of Attorney are a document that authorizes someone to make certain decisions on your behalf to step in your shoes and make those decisions the common ones we see are going to be for the finances the durable Financial power of attorney uh for health care which is the health care directive or healthcare proxy or medical power of attorney oh kind of mean the same thing and the third one is the guardianship directive which authorizes someone to take care of your minor children another one we often see would be a tax power of attorney so that an individual your agent can talk to the IRS today we're talking about the pet power of attorney um what we include in this it is slightly different than all the other ones because we are just dealing with pets there's a few authorities we need to make sure to include uh first of all we need to authorize your agent to find temporary care for the individual yes we might want to say your agent could be the one to take care of the pet but what if they can they need to have authority to go to a kennel or go to an animal hospital or to another person and say you please take care of fluffy until uh Gregory regains capacity another thing you want to include in the power of attorney will be financing what who's going to how do you need have authority to pay for that kennel or animal hospital or for food or for whatever needs to be done to make sure fluffy is Happy uh third Authority we need to include is a permanent home we need to uh say if I become permanently hospitalized or institutionalized um or if I am deceased I authorize my attorney in fact to find a home for fluffy um and the fourth one the sad one is what if something bad happens to fluffy uh what if Fluffy gets to the point where uh fluffy can no longer live a life with any sort of quality of life and needs to be put down we need to authorize under the power of attorney your agent to actually be able to put down fluffy if need be now that brings up an important question of release of liability and there's two releases of liability you need to include in the power of attorney the first one is of the agent themselves uh they aren't going to want to put down fluffy if they might be sued uh afterwards um or give uh fluffy to be taken care of by an animal hospital if they might be sued for that the second release of liability needs to be specifically for the euthanasia um if a veterinarian uh or someone puts down fluffy under the uh the uh guidance of your uh Pet Care agent then they need to have a release of liability because they don't want to be sued when uh you regain capacity they don't want you to come back and sue them because they just follow the instructions of your Healthcare agent now there is uh there is an important thing to note in Minnesota about uh this kind of power of attorney in and sadly it is just it's unenforceable in Minnesota to we have a a power of attorney where the authority must be honored by the person that is being interacted with by the agent it has to be a statutory power of attorney and we have currently four statutory Powers of Attorney or four or five statutory Powers of Attorney there's a statutory short form Financial power of attorney for finances there is a healthcare directive power of attorney uh there is an IRS tax form that's a federal level and there is a guardianship directive for minor children there is no such thing as a power a statutory power of attorney for a pet so what we're really doing is we're creating a license uh or giving a waiver um or contractual authority to our agent to do what they need to do that's neither here nor there but just be aware that even though you put in the release of liability there might be a veterinarian this says I'm sorry I can't I can't do what needs to be done for fluffy because I'm concerned about getting sued uh a couple other things to note about incapacity planning uh a big one we're going to talk about this in the next video as well is we need to make sure that we have notified the individual who is going to be the pet care or taking care of our pet um if we're incapacitated uh the best way to do this that I know of first is have a conversation with them and say hey I've nominated you to take care of my horse uh congratulations uh you good with that and if they say say I don't know or I'm not fine with that then you need to find someone else the second thing you need to do is have a wallet insert and it needs to say in notify in case of emergency your health care agents once we've the health care agents are notified they're going to look at the healthc care directive that you've already distributed to them they're going to say oh I need to know notify Bob that he's got to take care of fluffy now and we'll make sure that that happens the other really important thing anytime we're talking about pets it's very similar to Children uh both pets and children are really bad about telling you what their needs are and and what they have to do to live so uh pets are incredibly bad at it because they have a really hard time telling you uh who their veterinarian is who uh what their medical needs are what medications are they on what are their feeding instructions those some of those soft things like how many walks a day Fluffy's expecting are really important is Fluffy good with kids does he have any experience with kids is Fluffy good with cats or other dogs uh that can be a problem if they're not so make sure to include these instructions uh you can uh I advise drafting them up so if you have to put uh have somebody watch fluffy while you're uh on a vacation you already have them written down you just have to give them a copy of those instructions distribute it with your uh power of attorney for pet care or just to your pet Guardians when you have a talk with them and they'll feel much better about taking care of fluffy uh if something does happen to you so that is my take on incapacity planning for people with pets I hope you like today's video if you did like today's video please feel free to hit that like And subscribe button it really helps support the channel now we've taken a couple months off here and there but we're right back on schedule we're going to be doing a new video every other week or twice a month um if you have any questions leave them in the comments below or send me an email otherwise until next time this is Gregory Singleton signature law