What Is Estate Planning?

You can save your loved ones a lot of money and frustration by devising a plan for the management of your health care and property if you become severely disabled or pass away.

A Louisiana estate planning attorney can help you with:

• Advance health care directives that tell how you want your health care managed if you ever lack capacity speak for yourself
• Powers of attorney that appoint someone to manage your property and sign legal papers for you if you become unable to take care of your own affairs
• Wills and probate that transfer your property to selected beneficiaries upon your death
• Trusts that provide for the care of children or disabled persons, minimize taxes or protect against creditors
• Ways to avoid probate that transfer property at death - insurance, gifts, joint ownership of property, bank accounts
• Medicaid eligibility planning

Advance Directives for Medical Care

Advance directives are legal documents that tell how you want your health care managed if you are incapacitated. Louisiana advance directives can include all or some of the following documents: 

• Living Will: Use this document to indicate you want life-sustaining procedures, like mechanical ventilators or artificial feeding tubes, to be withheld if you are terminally ill or permanently unconscious
• Medical Power of Attorney: Use this document to select someone, a family member or friend, to make your health care decisions if you lack capacity to make them yourself.
• Anatomical Gift Donation: Use this document to donate your organs or other body parts upon your death 

The Louisiana Secretary of State's office maintains a Living Will Registry. You may file your Living Will in the registry for $20. The office will then provide copies of your Living Will to doctors and health care facilities when requested.  

Powers of Attorney

In Louisiana, you can sign a durable power of attorney to appoint someone to handle your assets if you lose capacity. A power of attorney should include the power to:

• Manage and transfer all assets
• Deal with the IRS
• Make gifts on your behalf
• Create and amend any trusts you set up

You don't need to transfer any assets when you sign a power of attorney. It is a good idea to keep the person you've chosen informed about your ongoing financial matters.

Making a Will

In Louisiana, you can make a valid will if you are at least 18 years old and of sound mind. Your will must be in writing and signed by you or by another at your direction and in your presence.

In the will you can

• Distribute your property
• Select a guardian for your minor children
• Name an executor or personal representative to manage the probate of your will and the distribution of your property after your death

You can change your will by making a new will that replaces or revokes the old one or by making an addition to the will, called a codicil. Changes such as a marriage, divorce, birth or adoption of a child, new property ownership or moving to another state should cause you to review your will and consider whether it should be changed to fit your new situation.

A  Louisiana estate planning attorney can explain the consequences of some of the most basic choices you must make in writing your will. It makes sense to have an estate planning lawyer draft your will so you avoid costly mistakes and achieve your intended results.

Related Resources on Lawyers.com^sm

- Contact an Estate Planning attorney in your area for specific advice, and read about Trusts & Estates: Selecting a Good Lawyer
- Need a form? Access hundreds of Personal Legal Forms, including an Living Will, Power of Attorney and Last Will & Testament
- Read Trust Basics, Gloria Allred Wills & Estate Planning Tips and other Estate Planning articles and information
- Legal Dictionary
- Visit the Legal Forums for discussions on Estates, Wills & Probate topics