Who will look after us?

We all hope that when the time comes, we will die peacefully in our sleep at home, after a full and active life. But as they say, you have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. What if we become mentally or physically incapacitated and can’t look after ourselves anymore? What if we’re on our own and don’t have family members or others to take care of us?

If nothing else gets you, frailty probably will, so it makes sense to move to a place where you don’t have to deal with stairs, yard work or snow shovelling. It could be an apartment, a condo, or maybe a unit in a retirement home, but try to set it up so that you have the option to stay there and not move into care. So make sure that there is room for a caregiver to stay overnight, or to live in if necessary. Or consider assisted living, which offers some degree of personal care and health care support.

If you become mentally incapable of managing your own affairs, can’t prepare meals, can’t handle your finances, you need to find people to do these things for you. You’ll need two kinds of power of attorney, for personal care and for property. The skills and responsibilities for the two roles are quite different, so you might want to choose two or more people. You have to arrange this while you are still mentally competent.

The person you name as power of attorney for personal care can make decisions about your health care, housing and other aspects of your personal life, such as meals and clothing, if you become mentally incapable of making these decisions. It can’t be someone you already pay for care. You need to find a person you can trust to act in your best interest. They may have to advocate for you in the hospital or care home, so they need to be assertive and articulate. You could also try to form a Share the Care group.

Power of attorney for property involves a wide-ranging set of responsibilities, including managing your finances, paying your bills and preparing your income tax. So here too you need to find someone you can trust to act in your best interest. They also must have financial expertise, because they may need to make important financial decisions on your behalf. They’ll have to know all about your finances and have access to them.

What if you don’t have a friend or family member to fill these roles? You’ll have to hire someone. I wish there were someplace you could hire professionals to act as power of attorney, but no such luck. Start looking now to find someone. They’re called attorneys, but they don’t actually have to be lawyers. You could try looking for recommendations from social workers who run information and referral services in local senior centres, or from advocacy groups for seniors, or maybe through relevant local organizations such as the Alzheimer Society of Ontario. If you have an accountant or lawyer or financial advisor, you could try asking them for recommendations. If your affairs are complicated, you could consider hiring an actual lawyer or paralegal. Whoever you pick, it should not be someone who is a beneficiary of your estate. You don’t want them to have a conflict between spending money to meet your needs while you are alive and maximizing their inheritance. Proceed with caution; you’ll be putting a lot of power into someone’s hands.

If you haven’t appointed powers of attorney, and become mentally incapacitated, the Ontario Office of the Public Guardian will assign someone to manage your affairs. But by then you’re in no position to make your wishes known. So make every effort to appoint people of your own choosing while you are still competent to do so.

Once you’ve made those key decisions, you have to turn them into legal documents. For the power of attorney for personal care and the power of attorney for property, download the forms from the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, have them signed by yourself and two witnesses, file them away and let people know where to find them. You might want to include an Advance Directive, documenting your treatment preferences in the event of serious illness. There are good resources available to help you through this part of the process, for example here and here.

The advice out there is pretty sparse and fragmented, but I’ve pulled together the best that I could find. It’s not definitive by any means. For example, I haven’t addressed the question of how to manage all these needs on a low income, mostly because I couldn’t find any good answers. You need to do your own research on the matters that pertain to you. If you have knowledge or expertise that would help guide us, please add your comments.