POA and Health/Insurance/Bills

[Mike93]

Hi,

I'm working on getting all my bills paid digitally, so that if
I become incapacitated and the POA is invoked, the person acting
as POA won't have a lot of paperwork to deal with. My remaining
relatives are a bit untrustworthy so I'm going to create a trust
and appoint the bank as executor/POA. They offer that service and
have a good reputation. Plus, it's really the only option I see at this point.
I'm sure they will charge a bunch but that's ok with me, since I won't be
there. Most of my 'stuff' will go to charity via Salvation Army, which
has a distribution network for material goods. They handle estates.

So far it looks like an annual deduction from investments to
my local bank will fill the bank account that pays the bills, and
I'm working on linking my bills to the bank account.
'Doublenet pay' is another option, but I haven't checked it
out yet.

I've learned that T. Rowe Price has their own POA form, and the post office
has a form. Also Prudential [for short and long term disability]
requires I file a letter with them, although they were a little unclear
about what they wanted exactly.

Has anyone worked on a similar process and found something better?
My lawyer said for Health POA I could just let the court appoint
someone, although that would cost 10K or so. However, it is
a decent option. The court is high profile so they probably won't
assign someone that screws up.


Thanks,


Mike

[Spock]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike93 ..... I've learned that T. Rowe Price has their own POA form, and the post office has a form. Also Prudential [for short and long term disability] requires I file a letter with them, although they were a little unclear about what they wanted exactly.

In doing my Dad's POA/conservatorship (dementia) armed with court orders to take over all of his finances, EVERY institution I dealt with in the process required their own unique form with different information to be reviewed by their own legal team. Wells Fargo never did comply despite my already being joint on his checking account as well as co-trustee of his trust. 3 years, repeated phone calls, and umpteen document uploads later Discover Bank is still mailing statements to the wrong address... we just drained the account down to a $0.03 balance and will let it sit there until they close the account for inactivity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike93 ..... Has anyone worked on a similar process and found something better? My lawyer said for Health POA I could just let the court appoint someone, although that would cost 10K or so. However, it is a decent option. The court is high profile so they probably won't assign someone that screws up.

I was eating breakfast while reading this and the last sentence made me almost spew cereal on my screen.
The court appointed a 3rd party conservator for my Dad (throwing out 20ish years of estate planning and preparation). The conservator, despite being well know in the community) was completely ignorant.

She would not make RMDs from Dad's IRAs much less take a bigger withdrawal allowed by increased headroom in his tax bracket due to medical expenses. Her reasoning was that "but he doesn't have any medical expenses!" (I assume she confused an IRA with an HSA). After being educated on the difference she still refused claiming "but he will have to pay tax on it!"... my lawyer had to explain to her that "better to pay X% tax now than 2X% next year".


When it came to sell Dad's mobile home in a 55+ co-op community, she wanted to list it at about 1/3 of it's value. Her "research" indicated that was what the trailer was worth but she didn't account for owning shares in the MH park/co-op.
All the court appointed conservator did was bring yet another attorney (hers) into the mix and increase legal expenses.


Just because the court appointed them does not mean they are capable.

[Mike93]

Thanks for your heads up on the reality of the situation. However the 'court appointed' would just be for the Health POA. Probably the coroner. I was told the Health POA was for the 'do we turnoff the machine' type decision. They wouldn't be involved in spending cash to fix up a yacht or anything like that. I learned I couldn't appoint my doctor because of conflict of interest-- another amusing irony of the medical/financial world. I do take some comfort knowing that charity is locked in via a will however. I also see reading some Kafka in
my future.