Power of Attorney

Conservatorship

The title given to the person who will be in charge of your finances, learn here what this means to you.

Conservatorship is the position of managing someone’s financial assets upon their inability to act on their own behalf due to disability.

Your living trust allows you to plan in advance for not only death, but for illness, disability or senility. Just as you appoint someone as a successor trustee to manage the trust assets upon your death or incompetence, you should also appoint someone to conservatorship as well. The conservator becomes responsible for ensuring your personal safety and financial well-being. Basic decisions include where you will live, medical requirements and proper provision for food and clothing. Without personally naming conservatorship, many families find it necessary to go to court to be appointed conservator of an afflicted loved one.

If you are like most people, you don't plan to become incompetent or disabled. Most of us spend our entire lives providing for loved ones and accumulating property to promote their comfort and well-being. As a result, we are usually taken by complete surprise when something does indeed happen to us. We rarely think about the possibility of becoming disabled prior to death. Yet, insurance industry statistics indicate that you are more likely to become disabled and then die than to keel over dead without warning. (Disability, for the sake of conservatorship, refers only to a complete breakdown of mental or physical well-being; the kind of disability where you can no longer care for yourself.)

If you can no longer take care of yourself, you will not be able to then decide with which relative or in which rest home you would like to live. Someone will have to care for you and make those types of decisions for you. Only you can make sure that it will be a loved one by planning in advance and naming who will hold conservatorship in your living trust.

If you do not name conservatorship in your living trust, a court will have to appoint someone to be your conservator after the fact. Don't let your life be controlled by a court that doesn't know or love you. You can prevent this by naming who will hold conservatorship in your Health Care Durable Power of Attorney inside your living trust.