Durable Powers of Attorney
An important part of your Will Package is your Durable Powers of Attorney. Through the use of a Durable Powers of Attorney, you may authorize an Agent to act on your behalf to create, modify, fund, or terminate a trust; created and fund a trust for Medicaid planning purposes (i.e., a Qualified Income Trust or “Miller” Trust), change your transfer on death beneficiary account designations, make gifts or transfers on your behalf, and/or change your qualified retirement account (e.g., 401k or IRA) distribution schedule.
All of those express powers should be carefully considered and reviewed, since you are obviously putting a lot of authority in the hands of an immediately authorized agent to act on your behalf. I assure you that on a difficult estate or elder law case, we might need every one of those express powers to be exercised by your Agent on your behalf, for proper pre-mortem estate planning or elder law planning purposes.