This important document allows someone else to act on your behalf if you are no longer able to manage your own affairs (but are still alive). A power of attorney can be “open” (it can be used at any time, even if you are not incapacitated), or it can be “springing” (it can only be used if you are incapacitated). If you have a power of attorney, and something happens to you which makes it impossible for you to act on your own behalf, the person you have named can do things like paying your bills, arranging housing, applying for benefits, and a variety of other actions. If you do not have a power of attorney and become incapacitated, it is usually necessary to go through a guardianship proceeding in court, which can be expensive and can cause significant delays in getting things done.
Mr. Kirk is a born-and-raised Alaskan. He graduated from Chugiak High School and the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He then went on to the Cornell Law School, graduating with a Juris Doctorate, with a concentration in business law and regulation, in 1987. He was admitted to the Alaska Bar that same year, and opened his own practice a few months later.
This term means giving away your assets while you are alive, in order to avoid probate. For people who have more than $5 million in assets, it can be an important part of estate tax planning, and it is also sometimes used as part of Medicaid planning. For most people it is a dangerous strategy, for a number of reasons. If you are considering planned gifting, you should talk to an attorney first, to make sure this is really a good strategy for you. While planned gifting appears to be simple and efficient, it can actually cause major problems in many situations.
For many years Kenneth Kirk divided his time between estate planning and litigation, including many contested probate cases. Today he limits his practice to estate planning. He finds it much more satisfying to try to keep people out of court, instead of litigating cases in court.
Wills
An Advance Health Care Directive is a form you can fill out, which appoints someone to make medical decisions for you, if you are no longer able to make them yourself, and it also makes a number of end-of-life decisions in advance. These used to be called “living wills”, but the name was changed when the Alaska Health Care Decisions Act took effect in 2005.
Trusts
People have a lot of questions, and a lot of misconceptions, about Living Trusts. For the most part, people use them to avoid having to go through a probate case when they have died. In some states, the probate system is so bad that it is probably true that everyone there should have a Living Trust. Here in Alaska, the probate system is not as bad as it is elsewhere, but it can still be an expensive and time-consuming process. In addition, it can worsen family conflicts, and it means that there is a public record of your entire estate which anyone can view.