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 Michigan estate planning attorney can help you with:

• Advance health care directives that tell how you want your health care managed if you ever become too ill to 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 for medical care are written instructions that tell how you want your health care managed if you become incapacitated. Advance directives in Michigan can include one or more of the following documents:

• Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care: Use this document to select someone to be your patient advocate. You may give your advocate the power to make health care decisions for you if you ever become too ill to make them yourself. You can give specific instructions about the medical treatment you want to receive. You may specifically authorize your patient advocate to make decisions about withholding life-sustaining treatment that would allow your death.
• Living Will: You may use this document to indicate you want life-sustaining treatment, like artificial respiration or feeding tubes, to be withheld or withdrawn if you are terminally ill and near death or permanently unconscious. Unlike many states, Michigan doesn’t have a law governing Living Wills. However, it is considered good evidence of a patient’s wishes.
• Do-Not-Resuscitate Declaration: Use this document to state you don’t want anyone to try to resuscitate you if you stop breathing and your heart stops beating.
• Declaration of Anatomical Gift: Use this document to donate your organs or other body parts upon your death. 

Powers of Attorney

In Michigan, you can sign a durable power of attorney to appoint someone to handle your assets if you become severely disabled. 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 Michigan, you can make a valid will if you are at least 18 years old and of sound mind. Your will must signed by you or in your name by another at your direction and in your presence. You also need to have two people over age 18 sign your will as witnesses.

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 Michigan lawyer who does estate planning 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 Selecting a Good Estate Planning 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