As the Covid-19 pandemic has swept across the nation and around the world, those of us who practice in the areas of Wills, Trusts and Estates have noted an increase in calls from clients alarmed by what they are seeing on the news and in their own neighborhoods.  We typically field calls from clients interested in the more sophisticated documents found in the estate planner’s arsenal – Wills, Revocable Trusts, Generation Skipping Trusts, Lifetime Access Trusts, Gifting Trusts and the like.  These days our clients are even more focused on a document that typically does not receive as much attention as these other documents – the advanced directives.

Advanced directives include health care surrogate designations and living wills.  Depending on the state in which you reside these may be combined into a single document (New York and New Jersey for example) or in separate documents such as Florida. In either case, these documents give the client the opportunity to designate certain individuals to make health care decisions for them in the event the client is unable to do so on their own.  In the case of living wills, the clients express their wishes as they relate to the use of life support and under what circumstances they wish to refuse such treatment.

With the very real possibility that some of our clients may be placed on a ventilator in the ICU, our clients have never been more aware or concerned about making sure that their wishes are clearly spelled out.  In the past, these concerns often seemed far into the future but the pandemic has brought them very much to the present.  Today, nothing may be more important than contacting your estate planning professional to confirm that your existing documents are consistent with your wishes or, even more importantly, if you have not considered these issues at all.  It is critical you take the time to thoughtfully consider the content of your advanced directives.