Plan for Your Own Elder Care

AFTER I wrote a series of columns in 2022 about elder care planning for family members, I received a number of responses like this one: “What about married couples who have no children or whose family members don’t live nearby?” wrote one reader. “Or a single individual with no close relatives? How should these people plan for their own elder care?”

- JANET BODNAR

The short answer is that they should be doing much the same things as people who have families—except that their situation can be more complicated, so they may have to take extra steps. “Estate planning is fundamentally important for singles,” says Erin Smith, director of estate planning for Edelman Financial Engines.

In particular, you need to draft a durable power of attorney naming someone as “attorney-in-fact” to make financial decisions on your behalf should you become incapacitated, and you should appoint a health care proxy to handle medical decisions.

If you die without a will, state law determines how your assets will be distributed. But, says Smith, “no state has a statutory list of people to make financial decisions for you.”

Although adult children often fill this role, it’s fine to cast a wider net. “I don’t necessarily think of ‘family’ as blood relatives,” says Suzanne Blankenship, author of How to Take