I’m no longer a conservator, but I’ll always be ε4/ε4

[Brian4]

Doug, thank you for your courageous, moving missive to the group. You have had, and have, an amazing and (in the old-fashioned, classical sense) virtuous life. We're lucky to have you here.

Brian

[Nords]

... but maybe I’ll start writing more about Alzheimer’s. I write a lot about personal finance and long-term care insurance but I’ve avoided the ε4 topic. Most of my readers are in their 20s yet a few are in their 60s. I think they’ll appreciate learning more about dealing with dementia.

I’ve finally gone public with my APOE4 status.
https://the-military-guide.com/retireme ... -planning/

We’ll see where this ends up. As I’ve mentioned in other forums, this may help me distinguish my real friends from my acquaintances.

[NF52]

...I’ve finally gone public with my APOE4 status.
https://the-military-guide.com/retireme ... -planning/

We’ll see where this ends up. As I’ve mentioned in other forums, this may help me distinguish my real friends from my acquaintances.

Great writing, sly submarine humor and deeply persuasive reasons for all of us to help ourselves and our families hope for the best; plan for the worst.

I was struck by your comment on the post that "If an elder has no assets or will or medical directive or estate plan or powers of attorney, then it’s almost impossible to be their caregiver." I would agree that it becomes more difficult, but have known people, including my in-laws, who have fulfilled that role with the help of the local Office of Aging, hospital social workers and often time-consuming trips and personal financial support.

I hope your post inspires many to seek to create the future they want for themselves and their future caregivers. .

[Julie G]

We’ll see where this ends up. As I’ve mentioned in other forums, this may help me distinguish my real friends from my acquaintances.

So true! Thank you for joining us, my friend. The more of us who come out and make noise, the more traction we'll get with the prevention message which you beautifully managed to weave into your article. This is the best genome/long term care guide that I've ever seen focused on our gene. Kudos! I'm going to try to put a link to it in Dr. Bredesen's upcoming book.

[Nords]

We’ll see where this ends up. As I’ve mentioned in other forums, this may help me distinguish my real friends from my acquaintances.

So true! Thank you for joining us, my friend. The more of us who come out and make noise, the more traction we'll get with the prevention message which you beautifully managed to weave into your article. This is the best genome/long term care guide that I've ever seen focused on our gene. Kudos! I'm going to try to put a link to it in Dr. Bredesen's upcoming book.

Thank you, Julie!

[Tincup]

I’ve finally gone public with my APOE4 status.
https://the-military-guide.com/retireme ... -planning/

Doug, I appreciate your article.

I've been through this 3 times, once with my mother and twice with other in-law relatives. In all cases, the person ended up with dementia/AlzD.

Things that worked for me.

- the basics: medical and financial POA's that are kept "fresh." Meaning resigned fairly frequently.
- however, many financial institutions are reluctant to take a POA, except their own, so I got a POA from each institution
- if possible, put almost all assets in a trust (revocable in these cases) where I was the trustee or co-trustee
- not for management, but for estate purposes, established pay on death provisions (POD) on accounts that were not in the trust naming the trust as the beneficiary.
- a Will

The above requires someone who is very competent and trustworthy to give the powers to. While I was not in the military, both my current spouse and my children are or have been in the military in positions of responsibility. They have stories of where giving these powers have caused really bad things to happen and people get taken advantage of by parents, spouses, children and "friends." The above also must be done when the person is competent. If you wait till you need them. then it is too late.

If you pre-plan, then it can work well. Two of the people I did this for have passed and one is 95 and is in dementia care.

I have done much of this for myself, too. I still have some details to attend to. Mostly creating a "how-to" manual for handling assets that are not purely financial assets. If you know what to do, it isn't hard, but figuring it out from scratch would be difficult.

In my business, I have real property assets in more than one state. Twenty eight years ago, a friend in the same situation, but a generation older, shared what his lawyer had set up. It was a nominee partnership to hold title to all the assets. The partnership had a nominee agreement with his trust. He could have titled everything in the trust, but this partnership/nominee structure kept the trust name out of the public record. All of his real assets were titled in the name of the partnership. Therefore when he passes, an ancillary probate would not be required in the other states. Also if he becomes incapable of managing these assets, they can be manged by another partner, who also happens to be a trustee of his trust. I implemented this myself after he shared it with me.

[Nords]

I've been through this 3 times, once with my mother and twice with other in-law relatives. In all cases, the person ended up with dementia/AlzD.

Things that worked for me.

- the basics: medical and financial POA's that are kept "fresh." Meaning resigned fairly frequently.
- however, many financial institutions are reluctant to take a POA, except their own, so I got a POA from each institution
- if possible, put almost all assets in a trust (revocable in these cases) where I was the trustee or co-trustee
- not for management, but for estate purposes, established pay on death provisions (POD) on accounts that were not in the trust naming the trust as the beneficiary.
- a Will

Thanks, TinCup.

You mentioned some of this a while back in another thread, and I took notes:
https://apoe4.info/forums/viewtopic.php ... =70#p45370

My spouse and I are military retirees, and our daughter and son-in-law are also in the military. We’re all about the planning.

We’re still updating our estate plan, and the details will probably make another 3000-word post. Essentially we’re putting our adult daughter (our only progeny) in the co-trustee position you’re in.

It’s an interesting process. Trust lawyers are focused on protecting the grantors from bad things and incompetent/evil people: death, disability, dementia, blended families, minors, spendthrifts, addicts, and criminals.

We’re flipping the script to let our daughter act as us parents during our disability (including dementia) as well as after our deaths. Our daughter’s going to start as a co-trustee (as soon as we sign the trust) with the same trustee powers as us grantors. She’ll also have durable POAs over our other accounts. Our son-in-law is a contingency trustee, and two other relatives (a retired CPA and a business exec) are other contingency trustees.

When our time comes (disability or death) then we don’t want our daughter to deal with bureaucracy or gatekeepers or trust committees or doctor’s exams or lawyer’s petitions. We want her to be able to start taking care of us without any delay... and eventually distribute our estate.

The lawyers are skeptical, but my spouse and I can afford it. We each have military pensions and at age 70 we’ll start Social Security. If our daughter joins a cult or develops an addiction then we parents still have enough reliable inflation-protected income to support our living expenses and our long-term care.

More importantly, our daughter has seen me struggling with caregiver stress and she knows that it’s not going to get dumped on her. We’ve discussed the plan with her and our son-in-law for over a year as we draw up the paperwork.

We’ll use a revocable living trust for our home and our rental property. (Both are on Oahu.) As co-trustee (just like my spouse and me, the grantors) she’ll have the legal authority to handle whatever we’d want to do with the real estate. Ideally she’d inherit upon our deaths (via the trust) but until then she’d be able to act as a landlord and (if necessary) sell the properties. She could do whatever we parents would want to do, and as a co-trustee of a RLT she’d be able to do it without issues from the tenants or a buyer or a title insurer.

(Hawaii also has a Transfer On Death Deed which works great for the death of the owner, but only a trust seems to handle the issue of managing or selling the property during our disability.)

Our other accounts are simple:
- a joint taxable investment account for my spouse and me,
- our two Roth IRAs, and
- my personal taxable account holding my share of my father’s inheritance.
They’re all with Fidelity and they all pass by the appropriate POD/TOD beneficiary designations. We’re also executing durable powers of attorney on them for our daughter to access them for our care.

We’ve already done Fidelity’s DPOA for my personal account, and now it shows up as part of our daughter’s personal Fidelity account page. If she needed to spend money from it today then she could do it without any additional gatekeepers, permissions, logins, or passwords. (It even shows up in her Personal Capital summary.) As the saying goes, “Gotta trust your kid.”

We’ll execute separate DPOAs for the other three accounts.

Our remaining assets (personal property, two beater vehicles) are well within the Hawaii estate probate limit of $100K. We don’t plan to acquire more assets, but if they were valuable enough then we’d add them to the RLT.

The lawyer’s estate-planning package also includes a pour-over will, a medical directive, and another durable POA for our medical records (HIPAA). We’ve also set up our organ-donor cards (for the hospitals) and our body donor letters (for the local medical school).

Our checking accounts are handled with joint designations between us spouses and with our daughter. (A signature-authority arrangement would be less of a liability issue for our daughter, but our credit union doesn’t offer that.) In either case our income simply flows through those accounts to other accounts and wouldn’t put our other assets at risk if our daughter was sued.

The only “assets” not included in our estate plan are my angel investments (shares in startups). Those should resolve themselves within another 10 years as they’re either cashed out or become worthless. After 10 years, any lingering shares will get added to another durable POA and TOD/POD designations.

We’re putting more of our plans into place now:
1. We’ve gifted our daughter and son-in-law for several years (while we’re all still around to talk about it), and they’re getting comfortable with managing larger sums of money. They’re already frugal and financially competent with a high savings rate, and they’re already well on their way to financial independence in their 40s without our help.

2. I’ve already turned over most of the household finances to my spouse. I still pay the mortgage and my credit cards (autopay from my checking account) but she handles all the rest (autopay from her checking account).

3. Our spouse manages our rental property. She deals with everything and I’m just handyman labor (if necessary). As an unexpected side effect, I’m glad I don’t have to keep an eye on the rent or the property management!

4. When my spouse has had enough of managing the family finances (age 83?) then she’ll turn everything over to our daughter (who will then be in her 50s). Our daughter will be able to keep an eye on all the bills and credit cards and checking accounts— not just to understand the routine but also to watch for signs of trouble.

5. I’ll keep doing our tax returns as long as I’m able. (Angel investment K-1s and the rental property.) When the time comes, my spouse will turn that over to a tax preparer.

6. All of this is documented with a “User Manual” including logins & passwords. It’s not just to the financial accounts and the house’s utility accounts but also social media, online multimedia, online shopping, the rewards points (airlines, hotel programs), e-mail, and all the military/VA stuff. Most of this will be via a shared password manager like LastPass.

[Tincup]

My spouse and I are military retirees, and our daughter and son-in-law are also in the military. We’re all about the planning.

Sounds like a very thorough, well thought out and excellent plan. I look forward to your article!!

[Nords]

@Tincup (and anyone else who's followed this thread), the estate-planning post is finally up:
https://the-military-guide.com/family-e ... isability/

One immediate lesson has been that some property managers don't like working with rental properties that are in a revocable living trust. It may have been an isolated incident with one company, and we're continuing the research with other property managers.