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Prepared for a Medical Emergency?
Aging Well | Last Active: Oct 19, 2020 | Replies (23)Comment receiving replies
@fiesty76. I agreed. I have typed an emergency information with my daily meds, my children's phone numbers and my doctors business cards stapled together in my wallet. It had come in handy. My children all have copies of my advance directives and POA, and they know where the originals are.
I used to work in a bank and have seen children at a loss of what to do when their parents were suddenly incapacitated. If they were not given POA, or have joint accounts with their parents, financial institutions cannot, by law, release any funds or give them any information about their parents accounts. This include safe deposit boxes. If the children are not named beneficiaries of the account, we cannot release the funds to them should their parents passed away. It would be a good idea to check with your parents banks on these policies so everyone is aware.
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@mayofeb2020, Thank you and I so agree that keeping the info you mention in the wallet is helpful. As my list of meds/scripts and docs grows, I have relied particularly on the list of meds at doc appts and those I do work to keep updated as changes occur.
Also a big thumbs up for your banking work. This may be a story you can relate to as well. As POA for mom, who resided out-of-town, it became necessary for me to establish a new bank account in my city to manage her legal, medical, home health, house maintenance & repair as well as pay home health care wages and social security taxes, her property and income taxes, etc. When I presented my POA to the bank where I had accounts, I was told that changes in the Texas law had changed and that I would have to have an updated POA for her even though we were both residents of TX. Thankfully for us and our longtime family atty., she was alert and capable of signing the updated POA and I was able to establish the new account for her.
Another important point you encourage is for parents to set up joint accounts and to name their beneficiaries and do the same for their safety deposit boxes as well as for their investment accounts. My best friend's daughter created holy mayham over some jointly held financial accounts held by my friend and her guy. When my friend died, the daughter, as Executrix of her mom's estate, continued to create terrible banking, investment and other legal difficulties for my friend's partner of many years.
Too often people don't think think ahead or prepare for the complexities that those left behind will have great difficulty in accessing or managing.