Personal Planning – For BC Residents only
Personal planning is preparing for the rest of the time you are alive.
This applies to everyone:
- whether in good health or bad
- early in life or not
- single or married
- with or without children
This is not about estate planning. This is not about making a will. This is not about financial planning and trusts (although there is a financial aspect).
This is making a plan of who will assist you while you are alive. Same thing for assisting your loved one.
NOTE: This applies to residents of the British Columbia, current as of October 2019.
Backstory
In October 2019 I attended two webinars on Personal Planning for BC Residents. October is “Personal Planning Month” in BC. These webinars were put on by the non-profit Nidus.ca
The two webinars cover Representation Agreements and Health Care Consent. I found these two educational webinars extremely informative. They covered aspects of this topic that I did not know. I already knew about Representation Agreements in general, but I did not know that there were different types, depending on “is the person making the agreement mentally capable“.
I feel these topics are super important for all BC Residents, young, old, single, married, regardless of assets. In BC we are fortunate to have great solutions for someone who may have had a stroke, has a disability or is unable to make decisions for themselves.
If you are healthy now, you need to take some simple steps now, before you are in the situation where you are unable make certain decisions for yourself.
Topics include:
- What is personal planning
- How is this different from Estate Planning
- Who can make a Representation Agreement (its free to make)
- What happens if you don’t have a Representation Agreement
- Tools to help you make a Representation Agreement
- What is the difference between a Power of Attorney (POA) and an Enduring Power of Attorney) EPOA
I recorded the webinars so that you can watch them alone or with your family. Videos are available at:
If you would like to share this information here is a handy PDF to email or print.
Each webinar is about 90 minutes in length. Due to the text on the screen it probably better to watch on a tablet or PC/Mac.
Webinar 1 – Myths & Realities of Planning
Excellent introduction and overview of Representation Agreements and Enduring Power of Attorney.
The website http://www.nidus.ca has information on the types of Representation Agreements.
RA7, RA7 F+L, RA9, EPA
Notes from the video – You can download and complete one of the standard Representation Agreements from Nidus and complete them. No lawyer or notary required. No charge. People are educating others and helping them with this. An Enduring Power of Attorney needs to be prepared by a notary (or lawyer) and witnessed by them.
Disclaimer: Nidus is the organization that gave the presentation. They have lots of material on their website. They also have a Youtube channel with earlier versions of these presentations. There are other organizations and firms that can prepare these documents for you. I just found it easy to use and the information was very educational.
I prepared this page and videos to allow me to share this information with my family, friends and your friends and family. Feel free to share this page with them.
Webinar 2 – BC Law for Health Care Consent
This topic is about who can give health care consent in all sorts of situations when the person who made the Representation Agreement is not able to.
Very interesting as this is an area where the medical profession has usually been thought of as having “the final say”. It also highlights the fact that without a Representation Agreement a spouse does not have all the rights one would think!
Some Nidus docs >> Health Care Consent and Health Care Rights.
Let me know if you would like me to go over this material with you. I feel it is extremely important for each of us at least understand this topic.