Nursing Home Primary Support Person
Nursing Home Residents
Nursing home residents, assisted living facilities, and other care facilities may designate essential support persons as part of their care plan. 77 Ill—Adm. Code 50 (effective Aug. 1, 2024).
Residents in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other care facilities can now designate a family member or other person as a “primary essential support person” in their care plan.
A nursing home primary essential support person can continue visiting the resident even with general visit restrictions, including restrictions to limit the spread of disease.
Residents may also designate a “secondary support person” in their care plan. Primary and secondary support persons must sign a written agreement to follow the facility’s safety- and infection-prevention protocols.
Primary and secondary essential support persons must have unrestricted visitation access for residents receiving end-of-life care.
Courtesy of the Illinois Bar Association Journal law.isba.org/4dnLPgM
Power of Attorney in Nursing Homes
Health Care and Financial Power of Attorney documents are essential at every stage of life, especially in extended health care.
A Financial Durable Power of Attorney gives another person you choose the full legal authority to manage your financial affairs if you can no longer make these decisions yourself. A Power of Attorney is critical to ensure that your financial matters are handled efficiently in an unfortunate occurrence.
Suppose you cannot make these decisions yourself. In that case, a Health Care Power of Attorney is a legal document that gives another person the full legal authority to make all of your necessary health care decisions. This is an important document to handle your healthcare and end-of-life decisions.
The document is effective when you are terminally ill or become incapacitated. It allows you to establish important end-of-life decisions. This is also a flexible document. This power includes whether or not to use life-sustaining measures such as life support.
Power of Attorney documents for healthcare and financial affairs should be part of your comprehensive estate plan, starting with a Living Trust.
Living Trusts
If you have property, investments, or bank accounts in your name at the end of your life or incapacitation, they risk probate and cybercrime.
- A Will = Probate. The rule is no one can legally sign your name. Therefore, at your death or incapacity, all assets in your name are subject to the complete Probate process, which averages 18 months and is costly.
- Living Trust completely avoids Probate.
- A Living Trust estate plan includes Health Care and Financial Power of Attorney documents and a Last Will and Testament for guardianship of minor children and to “pour over” any assets still in your name at your death out of Probate.
- Your life insurance policies and deferred compensation accounts can name your Living Trust as beneficiary, subject to essential tax considerations.
Contact us today for further information or visit Tuohy Law Offices now.
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This blog entry is for information and planning purposes. Therefore, it is not legal advice. Please do not use this blog as legal advice, which turns on specific facts and laws in specific jurisdictions. No reader of this blog should act or refrain from acting based on any information included in, or accessible through, this blog without seeking the appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer licensed in the reader’s state, country or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction.
Supplemental Needs Trusts
