Your Umbrella

Planning for the future is like carrying an umbrella on a cloudy day. You know that if you take your umbrella, you’ll be schlepping it around without a drop of rain in sight. 

But leave it behind…deluge!

In Texas, where anything can happen in the legislature on any given day (not to mention what’s happening in Washington DC), proper planning allows you to overcome these obstacles by contracting around Texas’ bad laws, creating the legacy that you deserve.  

Why Legacy Planning Matters

Legacy planning is essential for everyone, but Texas's legal landscape – complex and often hostile – presents unique challenges. Proactive asset protection becomes even more critical when you consider potential changes in healthcare, employment, and family law that elevate the need to make advance healthcare decisions and long-term caregiving arrangements.

Despite 2015’s landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges , which brought nationwide recognition for same-sex marriages, many LGBTQ2SIA+ individuals still face significant challenges in employment, retirement, and estate planning. Legal discrimination persists and recognition of non-traditional relationships is not uniform.

Let’s take a look at the umbrellas 
you might choose 
to keep for your rainy days.

Your Essential
Legal Documents

Powers of Attorney:

Texas recognizes two different powers:

  • Medical PoA for medical and healthcare decisions
  • Financial PoA for financial and legal decisions

Powers are typically used during a short-term disability that temporarily prevents you from making your own decisions, but from which you are expected to recover. Spouses are often presumed to have power of attorney, but expressly granting this power in writing ensures that the person who needs the decision-making power has that power when they need it and before it is too late to give it, especially if you’re dealing with religiously-affiliated hospitals.

Guardianship Declaration:

IRL, guardianships are not as common as celebrity gossip might have you believe, but they are not unheard of. 

  • Medical PoA for medical and healthcare decisions
  • Financial PoA for financial and legal decisions

In the event that you become permanently incapacitated and a judge decides that someone must be appointed to handle your affairs, a Guardianship Declaration – also known as a Pre-Need Declaration – allows you to tell the court who to appoint. Having this declaration can prevent an expensive and timely legal battle.

Living Will:

Perhaps the most common advance directives, the Directive to Physician – also known as a Living Will – typically governs your end-of-life decisions but can also be used to communicate your medical treatment preferences any time that you are not able to communicate them yourself. 

  • Do you want all extraordinary measures to keep you alive as  long as possible?
  • Do you want to be made comfortable and allowed to die naturally?

It’s important to discuss your choices with your doctor and your loved ones before it’s too late to ensure that everyone understands what you would choose if you could.

Last Will and Testament:  

Who inherits the dungeon when you die?

Used with other legacy documents, the Last Will and Testament becomes a beautiful flugelbinder, holding your umbrella closed.

Your Will is a set of instructions specifying how your probate assets are to be distributed and by whom. Clear instructions can prevent disputes and ensure that your chosen family is taken care of in the manner that you desire. Partnered with careful beneficiary designations, a properly executed Will can streamline the probate process.

Agent to Control Disposition of Remains:

IMHO, this is the most important and powerful document that any person can have.  

According to the National Funeral Directors Association, in 2023, cremation was preferred to burial 60% of the time. Because cremation is irreversible, in the absence of paperwork, the default is burial.

In Texas, if you die without a written document appointing someone to make decisions about your remains, your “next of kin” will have the right to control what happens to your body.

“Next of kin” typically means: your surviving spouse, then your adult children, then your parents and adult siblings.  Is this who you want making your last decisions ever??

Depending on your family dynamics – and the state of Texas’ current laws – this could be a nightmare. The Agent to Control document is the easiest way to memorialize who you want making decisions and instruct that individual about what decisions you want made.

Hospital Visitors:

If COVID taught us anything, it is that people don’t always act compassionately in the face of a crisis.  No one deserves to be left alone because decisions were taken out of their hands.   

  • The visitor authorization form allows you to designate your “family” regardless of what anyone else thinks.  

You can designate individuals like partners, best friends, or chosen family members, even if you aren't legally married or traditionally recognized as kin.  

Everyone Has Something to Protect  

Even if you think you have nothing worth protecting, you do. And life has a way of changing, often when least expected. Taking the time to create a thoughtful and meaningful plan ensures that you live your intended legacy, and your loved ones are cared for in the manner in which you want them to stay accustomed.

Take Action Today

Creating a comprehensive legacy plan is an investment in your peace of mind and your family's future. Don't wait until it's too late to have this difficult conversation.  

Building a Bulletproof Plan  

Given the potential for hostile family members (and legislators) to challenge your wishes, consider “bulletproofing” your estate by creating a comprehensive legacy plan that expressly names the individuals that you want handling your affairs, and provide those individuals with specific instructions that apply to a variety of situations.  

The Fine Print

I hope you found this article useful.  The information is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only; this is not legal advice.  Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and the author.  Please seek appropriate legal advice before acting (or refraining from acting) based on this article’s content.  Remember, I am “an” attorney.  I am not (yet) “your” attorney.