An estate planning team is simply not complete without the inclusion of a client’s close relatives and friends.  While it is vital to include members on the team such as attorneys, CPAs, and medical professionals, it is also just as important to include the people who support and love the client.  Close friends and relatives know her like no one else; their role in her life becomes much more critical for her well being as she continues to age. 

              If and when a client eventually moves into an assisted care living environment, relatives and friends will be her only remaining connection to society.  Illness can take its tragic toll on our bodies, but it is the support of our loved ones that will encourage us to regain and maintain our health.

              It’s difficult to think of ourselves or our loved ones as elderly and no longer able to care for ourselves.  My father once defined an “older person” as someone who is at least ten years older than us, thereby never actually declaring ourselves “old.”  I always found this definition to be comical, yet ultimately true.  When a client of mine turned 104 years of age, she announced to me one day that she was officially “old.”  She claimed there were not any more people who were ten years older than her anymore.

              Unfortunately, statistics show that because Americans are living longer lives, many reach the stage of needing a caregiver and/or assisted living later in life.  This can be a terrifying time in a person’s life, and many rely on the presence and advice of close relatives and friends to help them through it.  It’s important for family members and friends to recognize that at this stage, they become the loved one’s primary caregiver, as well as a life-giver.  Without loved ones’ support and presence in their lives, many elderly clients lose hope and decline rapidly in regards to their health.

              Family members and close friends of the client are frequently relied upon to make the “correct” choices in nursing facilities.  With the plethora of choices in assisted living facilities, this can be a daunting task.  I advise family and friends to locate a street map and mark the area of their home.  Draw a circle around the home to indicate where the relative or friend could drive to in twenty minutes or less.  This becomes the range of area from which nursing facilities should be selected.  As the primary caregiver and life-giver, the client’s family and friends need to be an active, physical presence in their loved one’s life.  Friends and relatives are more apt to visit their loved one in an assisted care facility the more convenient it is to their home and community. 

              Frequent visits from relatives and close friends are vital for the health and well-being of the client in an assisted care facility.  If a relative or friend visits five times a week for five minutes, the client will be happier and better off, as a general rule, than with only one visit a week that lasts five hours.  Frequent and shorter visits will encourage consistent care of the client and allow the personal relationship between the client and relative or friend to continue to grow. 

              When one of my client’s parents lost the ability to take care of himself any longer, he had to admit his father to an assisted care living facility.  My client visited his father, Harold, every other day on his way home from work for an hour.  While Harold had other visits from grandchildren and relatives, he looked foreword to my client’s visits and considered him to be “in charge” of his health.  Without fail, whenever my client would leave town, even for only a few days, his father would come down with pneumonia and a strong bout with depression.  Harold’s symptoms would begin to slowly mend when my client came back to town.  

While family and friends cannot center their entire lives around visits to a loved one, it is important to remember just how much impact a visit can have on the well-being of a patient.  Therefore, the inclusion of close relatives and friends on the estate planning team encourage these members to stay strongly connected to their loved one.  Without the love and support of our family and friends, it’s difficult to succeed in life, let alone maintain a healthy lifestyle in an assisted living facility.  Such vital importance to our lives makes relatives and friends one of the strongest links in the estate planning team.