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Entrusting Life and death decisions in New York (by Lynn Brenner) - Part I.
If you don't write a will, your loved ones will pay for it after you're gone. But if you don't have a health-care proxy and a Living Will, they're likely to suffer for it while you’re alive - and so are you.
A good estate plan doesn't just dispose of your Property after you die. It also addresses lifetime issues you and your family will face if you become incapacitated - something that can happen to 30-year-olds as well as to 80-year-olds. That's why, regardless of age, everyone should have a durable power-of-attorney, a health-care proxy and a Living Will.
My last column discussed powers-of-attorney. So in this column and the next, let's talk about health-care proxies and Living Wills, which are sometimes called "advance directives."
A few decades ago, these documents didn't exist. It was understood that if you were comatose, your family would make your Medical Decisions. It's not that simple anymore. Without your "advance directives" to support their decisions, your family may be forced into an emotionally and financially draining battle for the right to make Medical Decisions on your behalf.
This new reality is epitomized in the Supreme Court's 1990 "Cruzan" decision: A 1983 car accident had left Nancy Cruzan in a vegetative state. Her parents asked that she be taken off an artificial feeding machine. The hospital, backed by the state of Missouri, rejected their request. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Missouri's decision, because there was no clear and convincing evidence of what Nancy Cruzan would have wanted. ... (Continue part II)
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