COVID-19: Estate Planning Considerations

By: Rob Cohn

April 2, 2020

Now may be an opportune time to update your estate planning documents as current events reflect the uncertainty of our lives and underscore the importance of having up-to-date documents in place.

It is important for you to have a living will and a designation of health care representative naming someone to make medical decisions if you become incapacitated.  You should have medical directives with HIPAA waivers in place, so your representative will be able to access your private medical information. You should also consider having signed durable powers of attorney, naming an agent to manage your finances if necessary.

In the event of death, you would want your wills, revocable trusts and beneficiary designations to be current in order to ensure that your assets will be transferred to your intended beneficiaries, with as little complication and expense as possible.

Recent changes in the law should be incorporated into your estate planning documents.  For example, effective January 1, 2020, Connecticut enacted a version of the Uniform Trust Code, a law allowing asset protection trusts and a directed trust statute. These new laws should be explained and considered, as they impact every trust.

We can work quickly and creatively to complete updated medical directives, powers of attorney, wills, trusts, amendments and other estate planning documents for our clients.  We can also assist our clients with signing documents while minimizing the risk of viral infection.  Reviewing documents can be done over the phone or by video conferencing. When necessary to meet in our office, we take care to maintain the prescribed social distance and to maximize the cleanliness of our office space.

For those clients who are uncomfortable coming to a law office under the current circumstances, under certain circumstances, we will travel to our clients’ homes, in order to facilitate the signing of documents, even in an outdoor setting.

We can also mail to our clients documents that only need to be witnessed and not notarized so that they can be signed in their homes on their own, provided that the documents can be signed in the presence of witnesses.  In this regard, wills, trusts and living wills need not be notarized.  On the other hand, powers of attorney do need to be notarized.  We can discuss with each client the details regarding who may witness documents as well as the logistics for having other documents notarized.

The important thing to keep in mind is that now is not the time to put off getting your estate planning affairs in order.  Quite the opposite – it is more important than ever not to procrastinate.  We are ready to assist you to make that happen quickly and safely.