Health Care Documents
Advance Directives for Health Care
Advance Directives for Health Care
In General
There are a variety of situations in which other people may make decisions for you.
Elder Law includes a wide range of subjects, including matters relating to Medicaid, including asset protection, Medicaid spend down, look back periods, avoiding or dealing with disqualification for Medicaid, and planning for a situation where one spouse needs to enter long term care, but the other may be able to remain in the home.
Under Oregon law, a divorced spouse will be treated as pre-deceased for purposes of inheritance from their former spouse under a Will that existed before the divorce, in most cases.
The current health crisis is causing some people to think seriously about creating a Will or a Trust. It is causing others who have been thinking of this to stop putting it off, and to start actually working toward finding a lawyer to work with them on estate and incapacity planning.
Many people are worried by the Coronavirus/COVID 19 pandemic, and are limiting their social contacts, and abiding by guidelines for social distancing.
Some people mistakenly believe that once a Power of Attorney has been signed, the person who signed the Power of Attorney is protected against undue influence.
This is, quite simply, wrong.
Sometimes even entities that should know better, such as health insurance companies, are confused by Powers of Attorney and Advance Directives for Health Care.
Advance Directives for Health Care, in contrast to POLSTs (Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment - see earlier article), are used to provide information and authority to substitute decision makers who are operating in a less urgent situation.
POLSTs (Physician’s Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) and Advance Directives for Health Care are often confused.