Helping Aging Parents with Their Finances

As parents age, they often rely on their adult children to handle financial matters. Attorney Justin Randall discusses setting the stage for those adult children to act in their parents' best wishes on WVRV's Local 5 Live.

Millaine Wells
You know as parents age, they often rely on their adult children to handle financial matters. Today we set the stage for those adult children to act in their parents' best wishes. With Hooper Law Office Attorney, Justin Randall. Good morning. 

Justin
Good morning. 

Lisa Malak
All right. So first, how do we make sure that adult children are ready to act on their parents' behalf?

Justin
As with a lot of things in estate planning, and as parents get older, it starts with the conversation, making sure that people are aware of you know, financial matters, where things are documents, where they keep their money, too. So one of the biggest things I recommend is introducing your children to the people you work with professionally. 

Millaine Wells
Okay, and that kind of snowballs into my next question, how do we make sure we know what accounts our parents have? And how to have access to them?

Justin
Yeah, so I mean, one thing is keeping a list is a really good idea, keeping it all in one place. So a lot of times a binder with all the statements is really important, or that introduction to the financial planner, and just that introduction alone, if they manage most things, that takes care of most of that concern.

Lisa Malak
And one of the bigger expenses that parents often face is Long-Term Care, right? So how can these children manage these finances? And it's especially important for married couples to plan for that.

Justin
Yeah. So I mean, with care costs in the area, pretty average over $100,000 a year, or possibly anyway, one of the most important things to be aware of is whether or not your parents have Powers of Attorney in place that allow you to do Long-Term Care Planning for them if they don't have capacity to do so themselves.

Millaine Wells
When it comes to record-keeping, what do children need to know to make sure that they're keeping track of what they need to?

Justin
Keeping track of expenses is really important, right? One of the things we always ask somebody is, you know, what does it cost to be you, right? What does that look like? Because that's really important when you're planning for care. But having access to that Power of Attorney and keeping track of bills is really important.

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