Using a Representation Agreement in your Estate Plan

Associate Colin Flannigan regularly advises clients in the practice areas of wills, trusts, estate and incapacity planning, estate administration, residential and commercial real estate, property matters, corporate transactions, and business law.

In this episode of Legal Matters, Colin discusses how a Representation Agreement works together with the other pieces of your Estate Plan. and how it can help when it comes to care choices.

Transcript:

When people think of an estate plan, they primarily think of their Will and Power of Attorney. However, another tool can be quite useful to complete your estate plan and that's a Representation Agreement.

It's kind of like a Power of Attorney where you're asking someone to make decisions for you when you're no longer able to. However, this Representation Agreement names someone to make personal and health care choices. It could be minor care choices, major care choices, as well as end of life choices. You may ask, do I need one? Needing one and benefiting from one are not necessarily the same thing, if you do need one, how much you would benefit from one will always depend on your personal circumstances. Questions to ask could be, what are your family circumstances and are there any complications within the family?

What would you want for advanced care planning or what you would want to happen in certain circumstances? As well, how much would potentially benefit could depend on your personal and health care circumstances as they stand now. Remember, this is a document of trust and we're going to be granting a lot of power, so you need to give careful consideration on who you want to appoint. This document will also interact with the rest of your estate plan, so everything needs to work together, including with your Power of Attorney.