Significance of In-Home Visits for Calgary Wills & Estate Planning
Neufeld Legal | Calgary, Alberta wills and estate planning lawyer, advising clients in developing and implementing their personal succession plans.
Contact Neufeld Legal PC at 403-400-4092 or Chris@NeufeldLegal.com
The significance of in-home visits for updating estate planning documents, such as wills, trusts, and powers of attorney, cannot be understated (and even more so where these legal documents have never been prepared), especially for individuals who may face challenges in traveling to a law office (whether at one's own home, a seniors home, a long-term care facility, or a hospice).
Key Benefits of In-Home Visits
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Convenience and Accessibility: This is a primary advantage, especially for the elderly, individuals with mobility issues, or those with busy schedules and young children. An in-home visit eliminates the stress of travel, traffic, and parking, making it easier for those individuals to complete a crucial and sometimes difficult task.
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Comfort and Personalization: Being in the familiar and comfortable environment of one's own home can help many people feel more at ease when discussing sensitive and personal topics related to their finances, health, and family dynamics. This can lead to a more open and thorough conversation, ensuring the estate plan accurately reflects their wishes.
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Access to Information and Documents: People often have all their important financial and legal documents readily available at home. This makes it easier to reference deeds, bank statements, and other vital information that an attorney may need to review during the consultation.
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Capacity Assessment: An in-person visit allows the lawyer to more effectively assess the individual's mental capacity, which is a critical legal requirement for creating or updating a will. This can help to prevent future challenges to the validity of the documents.
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Witnessing and Execution: The physical presence of the lawyer and other required individuals can facilitate the proper and legal execution of documents, ensuring all signing and witnessing requirements are met. This is a crucial step that, if done incorrectly, can invalidate an entire estate plan.
For though it is not our role as a lawyer to facilitate the legal interests of our clients, it is important that we present options and alternatives, while seeing out the pros and cons of those options such that the client might make an intelligent and well informed decision. Thereafter, we need to make sure that the individual's decision works and is capable of standing up against legal scrutiny. Because the unfortunate thing with legal actions undertaken while an individual confined to their home is that if they are unpopular with certain people, they might well be challenged in court at a later date. As such, we need to make sure that those legal actions are done correctly and the competency of the individual giving the directions is properly substantiated. And if that competency is lacking, that is a concern that needs to be addressed accordingly, given their inability to give legally binding directions that can withstand court challenges.
Home visits are necessary, but unfortunately come with additional legal cost due to the required travel time and other issues associated with timing, expedience and other legal challenges, especially when it comes to compentency and verification. These added costs can prove particularly significant; nevertheless, given the cost of not taking such action can be far more substantial, oftentimes requiring otherwise avoidable court intervention or resulting in actions that contravene one's present intentions. At the same time, getting one's legal paperwork completed consistent with one's current intentions and preferences gives people stuck at home (or in a hospice or a seniors home) the peace of mind to focus on making it through their personal challenges, as opposed to having the added concern of legal issues bearing down on them.
For more information about attending to legal matters at one's home, hospice or seniors home, and the associated costs involved as a result of the added time that must be expended in furtherance thereof, contact our law firm today at 403-400-4092 or Chris@NeufeldLegal.com to schedule an appointment.
* Please note that travel time and attending at one's own home / seniors home / long-term care facility / hospice will incur additional cost and expense as compared to comparable legal work on wills, trusts, personal directives and powers of attorney.
