Disability Planning & Health Care

It is common to want to avoid thinking about potential disabilities. But taking care of your incapacity planning will help you sleep better at night knowing you took responsibility to protect yourself, those you love, and your assets. Unfortunately, too few plan for an event that is more likely to be a probability than a possibility—and the consequences of not planning can be disastrous for all involved.

Littleton Legal PLLC will help you get your disability plan in place as part of your comprehensive estate plan. Every estate plan needs to include incapacity planning (aka “disability planning”). With people living longer due to advances in medicine and changes in lifestyle, odds are that most of us will become disabled for some time before we die and may need long-term care.

More comprehensive forms of incapacity planning include trust planning, but there are also several simple tools to minimize the inconveniences of disability include powers of attorney for health care, day-to-day personal affairs, and business.

Healthcare Decisions and Control. Consider your health care for a moment. As long as you are able to provide informed consent, you will continue to make your own healthcare decisions. But if something happens and you can’t, even if it’s for a short time, don’t you want to be the one who selects the person who will make those decisions on your behalf? Most of our clients do. We’ll show you how to use health care powers of attorney, HIPAA releases, advanced health care directives and trust planning to keep you in control and protect yourself and those you love.

Financial Decisions and Control. If you can’t pay your bills and manage your day-to-day affairs, don’t you want to be the one who selects the person who takes over for you? If you don’t decide, the court will freeze your assets and make that decision. Your loved ones – often, even if you have a spouse – will have to go to court and pay attorney and court fees so someone can be appointed to take care of your tasks. Worst of all, the court has the power to appoint a stranger as an independent guardian. This person will charge significant fees and have access to your money, property, and bank accounts. A durable power of attorney is a simple way to appoint a trusted person to manage your finances, business, real estate, etc. if the event you cannot act on your own behalf.

Minor Children Decisions and Control. What about your minor children? Who’s authorized to care for them if you can’t? Let Littleton Legal PLLC help you navigate the important decision process of nominating a guardian for your minor children.

Planning for disability may also include disability income insurance (to help replace lost income) and long-term care insurance (to help cover the costs of care that are not covered by medical insurance). Business owners may want to consider business or professional overhead insurance that will pay monthly operating expenses until they recover or the business can be sold or transferred, and buy-sell agreements in the event a co-owner becomes permanently disabled.

Disability before death is not always expected and it does not always happen, but it must be planned for.

Contact Littleton Legal PLLC to start your disability planning today.

Testimonials

Littleton Legal is to be commended for their promptness and professionalism preparing legal documents for my family. They were fantastic to work with on a schedule for our phone conversation and pick-up of our documents. I highly recommend Littleton Legal.

Arlynda S.

After our family friend passed away at 50 without a will or estate plan, I knew that I didn’t want my kids and spouse to go through the chaos my friend did. I can say that I have been thoroughly impressed with communication from their office. I like that Brittany has business experience and has answered questions about my LLC as well.

Melissa L.

I just want to Thank Littleton Legal for helping us with our Estate Planning and Will at a time that was very crucial that we get everything in order, and as many of us do we wait until something bad happens and then are trying to get everything done last minute. I cannot Thank Christy enough for being so kind to us and moving on things so quickly to get everything finalized when we already had so much going on, Thank You again to everyone at Littleton Legal, I plan on giving you more of my business and will refer you to as many people as I can!

Neovella S.

Littleton Legal helped my family with estate planning, and we felt very good having our options explained to us in a way that we understood. They were willing to help us with some non-traditional agreements we needed to include, and made sure we fully understood the potential impact of our choices in putting together our affairs. I am so glad that we started our marriage off this way; waiting until closer to the end of your life makes it much more difficult and emotional, as I have seen with our older relatives. Thanks Littleton Legal, for giving us the comfort of knowing our children won’t have to fight for our assets when we are gone.

Rebeka M.

I highly recommend the team at Littleton Legal for any needs related to estate planning, preparation and for a variety of business support services. Brittany and her team can help get you ready for the unexpected and will do it in a respectful and professional manner.

Kristi S.

I am the single parent of three and have a business, so getting my estate in order was not going to be an easy task, and I really needed to trust that the person doing it would do it correctly. I had worked around Littleton Legal for about three years and had considered them and several others for my estate work and very happily landed with Littleton Legal. Brittany and her team are knowledgeable, trustworthy, effective, and move quickly, which is what I was looking for. They use technology in a savvy way that saved me time and emotional energy. And, Brittany is always careful to explain why she is suggesting the strategy she’s suggesting and what the pros and cons are. I could not have found a better partner for my family’s financial security and I can’t recommend the firm highly enough.

Shelley C.

I co-counseled with Natalie on a probate matter involving foreign national. Natalie maintained a high level of integrity and kept the cost at a reasonable level. Eventually she negotiated for a resolution that’s in the client’s best interest. I’m impressed by the professionalism and would like to give her a shoutout.

Hansi M.

I couldn’t recommend working with Littleton Legal enough. Brittany and her team are professional, knowledgeable, and experienced. All of my questions were answered through my Estate planning. Brittany even made sure that questions I hadn’t thought to ask were answered as well. I’m so happy to have Littleton Legal on my side!

Jenn N.

Littleton Legal was a pleasure to work with from beginning to end. Their team helped my colleagues and me with issues around corporate formation and 501(c)(3) application. With the expert service of Littleton Legal, our nonprofit was granted tax-exempt status under 501(c)(3) as a public charity within a year of applying. Highly recommended for your business needs.

Marley S.

Brittany and her staff were so easy to work with. I went in not knowing a ton about estate planning and ended the process feeling confident in my understanding and of the decisions being made. There’s probably never a comfortable time to spend the money and effort on estate planning, but she has the process so streamlined that it was really painless. I highly recommend!

Allison H.

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