Orlando Estate Planning Attorney Breaks Down the List of Documents Required in Addition to a Will

Each person, whether they're 18, or 108, needs documents that we call Advanced Directives. These are documents that give people the ability to make legal and financial decisions on your behalf while you're still alive.

Why would you want this? Well, if you're in a car accident, you have a medical emergency, something happens and you can't make decisions for yourself. If you don't have these documents in place, your loved ones will have to go through a lengthy and expensive court proceeding called guardianship to be able to make decisions for you.

These advanced directives are comprised of a power of attorney, which is for legal and financial decisions, designation of a healthcare surrogate, which is for medical decisions, and a living will, which is instructions to your healthcare surrogate as to whether or not you'd want to be on artificial life support. There's a few other ancillary documents as well, but those are the big three. Everybody needs those documents if you're above the age of majority