I’m 82 and in pretty good health and mental acuity. For the last year I’ve endeavored to leave as few elder care responsibilities at the feet of my adult children. Will is prepared as is my healthcare directive, budget plan for long term care, access to financial information. I know these tasks won’t be possible indefinitely.
Too late for your LO to do this? But if it’s not too late for you, I can only say I see this as a final gift to my kids.
We updated everything about two years ago as the kids have grown up and moved out and our financial situation is considerably different than it was then. It's not a chore to do at all.
I don't know why people put it off, except it isn't a "sexy" purchase to pay an attorney $1500 to write a couple of pieces of paper in legalese. However, I'm very glad to have had it done and to be done with it, because my parents never did theirs until THE WEEK my mother got deathly sick at 85 years old. The appointment with the attorney and the illness were coincidences, but Mom recovered -- sort of -- yet was never the same cognitively. Had they waited even six months, she wouldn't have been able to legally sign those papers.
Having all that done before things really got hairy -- namely my healthy dad dying before my mother -- was a godsend. I can't imagine what a mess I would have had to deal with otherwise. As it was, my folks both resigned from their trust when Dad got sick, so I took over everything as trustee when both were still alive. (Mom wasn't really legally cognizant to sign then, either, but the attorney knew all of us and knew I wasn't going to steal her money and house and kick her into the street.) Dad died just a few weeks after that, and while we were all devastated, I had no issues with any financial or medical decisions because I was already in charge.
Your children are very fortunate to have you as their mother.
I agree, it’s a gift to our children
For my parents, I had to scramble to get them to an Elder Law Attorney when I found a file that had their Will that they had given me decades earlier. That Will must have been written before electricity was invented, it just felt that way as it was so out-of-date.
It would have been a royal nightmare if my folks, who were in their 90's, didn't get all the legal documents that they needed. The old Will had names of people [half had already passed] to get funds or their heirs.... but it didn't say how far out into the family tree to go. Thus family members I never met, nor their children, or their children's children, or even where on earth they lived, or their social security numbers.
Now Hubby is trying to get his grown children to at least get their own Wills and Power of Attorneys done. This just flies over their head, sigh.
“Why do not more embrace this concept?!”
because it’s a lot less work to do nothing, and to let someone else deal with it (aka your children, etc.). bonus points if you get to enslave someone and use them as a punching bag, when you’re having a bad day. how much better can it get?