Making the right decisions in life can be a hard thing to do. Weighing all of your options, deciding what will be best, and acting on those decisions isn’t something that’s always easy to do. But if a time should come when you can’t make important decisions for yourself anymore, be it because you have health issues or are needing to move into assisted living, it’s important that you’ve chosen the right person to take over this part of your life for you.
To help you in making this determination, here are three tips to help you decide who to make decisions for you when you can’t anymore.
Consider The Decisions You’ve Seen Them Make In The Past
As you try to think of who you want to trust with things like your power of attorney or your medical power of attorney, one thing you’ll want to consider is how people you know have made decisions for themselves in the past.
Ideally, you should want to have someone making decisions for you that you would have made for yourself. So if you have someone that, when faced with a tough decision in their life, responds in a way similar to the way in which you would have responded, they might be a good choice to have making decisions for you. But if there’s someone that has made decisions that you don’t agree with, understand, or respect, they may not be the best choice to make decisions for you.
Choose Someone You Trust Implicitly
Another thing you’ll want to consider when choosing someone to act on your behalf when you can’t make decisions on your own anymore is the level of trust that you have with someone. When someone is going to be making decisions for you and regarding the assets that you have associated with you, you’ll want to be sure that you can trust them to do what you want or what’s in your best interest.
If there is any hesitation in how much you trust someone to follow through on directions that you’ve given them or in doing what would be best for you and any other stakeholders in any given situation, then you may not want to trust this person with making these big decisions.
Choose Someone Who Can Easily Step Into The Role
Because you’ll never know exactly when the time will come that you’ll need someone to start making these important decisions for you, it can be helpful to ask someone physically close to you if they can take on this role. If you have to wait for someone to get to where you are or learn about what it is they’re having to make the decision of, valuable time can be wasted. So if there’s someone who lives near you or who has knowledge about the issues at hand already, they might be a good person to consider.
If you need to choose someone to make your decisions for you when you no longer can do this yourself, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you choose the right person.
