Taxation & Estate Planning

Peter Falk and Guardianship

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

This UPI article states that the daughter of actor Peter Falk -- famous for his roles in "Columbo" and "Wings of Desire" -- is seeking a conservatorship. (Conservatorship is just another word for guardianship.) Catherine Falk says that her father is suffering from Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and she is concerned that he "can easily be deceived into transferring away property."

Guardianships can do a lot of good things, but people tend not to like them -- they are very expensive, very time-consuming, and (as we see from the above) very public. A couple of notes on avoiding guardianship:

1. Guardianship can usually be avoided if the person in question has the appropriate documents. For instance, if you have a living trust, and all of your property is owned by or payable to the trustee of that trust, then no guardianship should be needed if you become disabled. Instead, you would step aside as trustee, and the successor trustee would use all trust assets to care for you.

2. A quick and dirty alternative to a living trust (at least, for purposes of disability) is a power of attorney. Actually, in Illinois, that would be powerS of attorney (one for health care and one for property). These documents allow you to appoint an agent to make health care and property decisions for you if you cannot do so.

However, the key to the above documents is timing. If someone is showing signs of dementia, it may already be too late for them to execute these documents.

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on December 16, 2008 (boomark / email).