Living Wills

The terms Living Will and Living Trust may seem a bit vague and easily misunderstood. At times people even use them interchangeably. However, a living will is different from a Living Trust. Although both may share a number of similar characteristics, you need to know their exact definitions to be able to fully utilize them to your advantage.

Living Will

A Living Will is a legal document that states your wishes regarding health care decisions in the event of an unfortunate occurrence such as a terminal illness or a permanent vegetative state. This form of advanced directive will only take effect once you have shown evidence of incapacity to participate in the decision-making process with regard to your medical treatment.

Basically, the policies that govern the making and application of Living Wills are based on state laws concerning the matter. The statutes may be different from one state to another. So be sure to follow state-specific procedures to avoid conflicts since this is, after all, a lawful document.

You may want to appoint a health care surrogate in case you become too ill to participate in making health care decisions for yourself. As the name implies, your surrogate will act and decide on your behalf under the mentioned circumstances.

Living Trust

A Living Trust is a written lawful document that partly takes the place of a will. It allows you to place all your assets (i.e. residential properties, bank accounts, or stock shares) in a trust to be administered to your advantage for as long as you live. In the event of your death, all your properties will be transferred under the names of your beneficiaries.

Most people opt to appoint themselves as the trustee in command of supervising all the assets of the trust. In this fashion, you can still be in control of your properties even though they’ve already been put into a trust. On the other hand, you may also assign a successor trustee – either an institution or a person – to administer the trust’s assets in case you become unwilling or incapable of performing your duties.