Medical power of attorney (also called healthcare power of attorney) allows you to designate another person(s) to make medical decisions on your behalf if you are unconscious or mentally incapacitated.

My daughter recently turned 20 and is headed to Rome for her fall semester of college. Since she’s an adult, we no longer have authority to make medical decisions or see her medical records unless she gives it to us. So making sure that my wife and I could do these things on her behalf should an emergency arise was a top priority for me. If you have adult children going out on their own, it’s a good idea to take the same steps we did.

Gift tax and estate tax laws can really throw a wrench in the works when trying to help family and friends experiencing financial hardship in this difficult economy. Giving too much help of the wrong kind can subject those gifts to taxes or deplete your lifetime gift exclusion so that your estate becomes subject to taxes.

A Limited Power of Attorney, rather than General Power of Attorney, is one of the chief tools I use as an estate planning lawyer to reduce potential conflict between co-agents.

Besides a Living Will and Healthcare Power of Attorney, it’s a good idea to have a Power of Attorney drawn up to assign someone to handle your financial and business affairs should you become mentally incapacitated. You can assign one person, two people, or more as agents authorized to act on your behalf. You can assign them general authorization (known as General Power of Attorney), which I don’t recommend, or limited authorization (known as limited power of attorney), which defines specifically what the agent(s) is authorized to do.

Setting legal guardianship for your children and making sure you leave enough of an inheritance to support your children are the key objectives to estate planning for young families. Life insurance and a revocable living trust are the primary components for achieving these objectives.

As an Ohio estate planning attorney, I advise young families to plan ahead in case a tragic event, like an automobile accident, occurs and claims the life of both parents. Consider who will care for the children. Will there enough money left behind to care for the kids until they become adults? Or will they be a financial burden on the ones who take them in?

In farm and family business succession planning, permanent life insurance policies play an extremely important role in that they equalize an inheritance between heirs who want to receive and run the farm or business and those who don’t.

Combined with other succession planning tools, like limited liability companies and trusts, permanent life insurance provides properly structured succession plans the means to buy out heirs who aren’t interested in running the farm or business. This allows heirs who are interested in running the farm or business to do so without angering family members or incurring excessive debt to buy out other heirs.

In Ohio, nursing homes and long-term care needs should be the first priorities of estate planning for folks over 65. Wills, trusts, and other estate planning tools that divide your estate amongst your heirs will mean little if your estate is consumed by the costs of long-term health care.

Approximately 75% of people over age 65 have not properly planned for long-term care and are likely to have their estate consumed by care costs or claimed for repayment of those costs under Ohio Medicaid rules.

Revocable trusts and the assets they hold are less secure against lawsuits or nursing home expenses than irrevocable trusts because the trust creator has the ability to revoke the trust and regain ownership of the assets it holds. As a Dayton trust attorney I often get asked, “Why use them at all? “

The simple answer is that they achieve three primary asset protection goals while allowing the trust creator (or grantor) to control the assets and change the trust’s beneficiaries and terms. An irrevocable trust cannot be changed once it is set up.

3 Estate Planning Objectives Achieved Through Revocable Trusts

Let’s look at these in more detail . . .

Family Farm Succession Planning: Gathering Your Team

Family farm succession planning is critical to ensuring that your family’s farm is passed to your heirs quickly, equitably and with minimal arguments or disruption to farm operations.

Ohio veterans, benefits from the Aid & Attendance pension for war veterans can help pay for in-home care, assisted living or a nursing home. As a lawyer focusing on estate planning, I find that few veterans are aware of these VA benefits and don’t understand how to qualify for them.

When it comes to long-term care options paid for by Medicaid, nursing homes are the first thing most people think of. However, other options, including home care and assisted living, are available through Ohio’s PASSPORT and Assisted Living programs.

Of particular interest to many elderly Ohio residents is the PASSPORT program, which recently received renewed funding through the year 2013. This program pays for home and community-based services that keep folks out of nursing homes.