WSJ Your Money Briefing - A Living Will Covers Your Most Important Asset: You

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

While a final will and testament directs the passing down of your assets after you’ve died, a living will spells out the medical care you want if you’re unable to speak for yourself. WSJ personal-finance reporter Ashlea Ebeling joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss the details you should include. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash wall street. Here's your money briefing for Friday, November 29th. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Having a will ensures that your assets and belongings are passed down according to your wishes after you die. A living will outlines what kind of care you want if you're unable to speak for yourself.

People feel really strongly about what kind of care they would want if they had an accident or a serious chronic illness. The living will spells that out. It would say whether you want all means taken to save your life or the other extreme, whether you refuse medical treatment. We'll talk to Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Ashley Ebling after the break. AI may be the most important new computer technology ever, but AI needs a lot of processing speed and that gets expensive fast.

Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash wall street, oracle.com slash wall street. Street. Confusion about end-of-life issues happens often in hospitals. A living will can remove the ambiguity. Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter, Ashley Ebling joins me.

Ashley, what is a living will and how does it differ from any other kind of will that someone would draw up? Well, basic will, your last will and testament, covers differ from any other kind of will that someone would draw up? Well, basic will, your last will and testament covers your assets, your real estate, your investment, what you want done with that at your death. A living will is a completely separate document and it covers your healthcare decision making, what you want done if you're unable to speak yourself. If you're in some kind of a medical emergency. Right, it could be an accident or it could be a coma

or a degenerative disease. If you're unable to tell the doctor what you want, you can say whether you want all life-saving measures taken or whether you, for example, don't want certain medical care. Could someone have a living will and a regular will? Yes, you would want both. People feel really strongly about what kind of care

they would want if they had an accident or a serious chronic illness. The living will spells that out. It would say whether you want all means taken to save your life or the other extreme, whether you refuse medical treatment. How common are these types of wills? About a third of people have these living wills that state their health care wishes.

It goes up to about a half for older people, but that still tells you half of the people don't have them. What other types of details are typically in one? It could spell out on the medical side if you want artificial hydration and nutrition, for example, it can also spell out on the softer side things like how you want your comfort care, if you want heart music, for example, or if you do or don't want a chaplain visit in the hospital. The tricky thing is states have different names for these documents. And in most states, there's one overall form called an advanced directive and that includes a section that's the living will. And it has another section

called a healthcare proxy where you name someone to make decisions for you if you can't. That person then is supposed to follow the living will that you wrote out. What are the most frequent problems that come up with a living will? People who don't have them, actually, that's the most confusing thing because then it's unclear who they should be asking and what you would want. Problems that come up, just confusion and ambiguity on terms if you have a document.

And people don't know where to find the directives when an emergency arises in some cases. Are there tools available to help write a living will to avoid some of the confusion? You might find out about it through your financial advisor or an attorney. If you're an attorney doing an estate plan, they would include it as part of an overall estate planning package. But you absolutely don't need an attorney to fill it out. All states have free forms.

Those are really just covered the basic legal medical care side of it. There are also websites prepared by medical professionals. One's called Prepare for Your Care. Another is Five Wishes. There's another website called Free Will that walks you through them, basically like TurboTax, like you're filling out your living will the way you might fill out a tax return. Where is a living will typically stored?

So that's a bit of a tricky question. Things are evolving. In some cases, you can attach it to your health care record, even digitally. So that's really advisable at a minimum habit in your health care chart. And you definitely should give a copy to your health care proxy, the person you've appointed to help carry out your wishes. And I did talk to this one man who thought he had one, and then his wife said she thought it was in their safe deposit box. He recalled they'd closed their safe deposit box and they looked in

their brown grocery bag where they had found their will but no living will. And then in the meantime, they've gone ahead and created one. So a little bit of record keeping is involved as well. And keeping it up to date if there are illnesses that as people's health change, they might change their mind. And then the most recent living will with the most recent date is the one that counts. What else can people do now to avoid confusion or family arguments later on? The main thing is really picking the health care agent and talking to them about your

wishes and making sure they're on board. If their ideas differ from your ideas on end of life care, then they might be more likely to try to block the hospital from implementing the living will as you directed. That's WSJ reporter Ashley Ebling. And that's it for your money briefing. Tomorrow we'll have our weekly markets wrap up, What's News in Markets. And then we'll be back on Monday with WSJ's Cheryl Winokur-Munk to discuss five things to do now to make handling your estate simpler for your heirs. This episode was produced by Ariana Asparu. I'm your host, J.R. Whelan. Jessica Fenton and Michael Laval wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley

are our deputy editors. And Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. Thanks for listening. AI may be the most important new computer technology ever, but AI needs a lot of processing speed and that gets expensive fast. Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash Wall

Street, oracle.com slash Wall Street.