The Mortimer Law Firm works to serve people, families, and small businesses in Estate Planning, Trusts, VA Benefits and Elder Law. We provide these services in a comfortable and professional environment for our clients.

Our Elder Law practice provides legal and useful solutions to the issues relating to the elderly and their families. We are dedicated to safeguarding senior’s rights and financial resources by creating plans tailored to their needs. Our objective is to assist clients to secure their possessions, protecting their dignity, and offering peace of mind.

Set up a meeting today to meet with one of our attorneys. Mortimer Law Firm offers legal services for all Northern Michigan consisting of complete service law workplaces in Alpena and Petoskey Michigan.

Estate Planning

An Estate consists of property you own at your death. Estate planning is a blueprint of how you want your financial and individual affairs to be handled after you die. Estate planning is making the most of what you have or can grow alive.

Wills and Trusts

A Trust is a legal arrangement in which the grantor transfers legal title of property to a trustee to hold and manage for its beneficiaries. If the grantor is worried that she or he may lose the ability to manage his/her finances, the grantor could transfer legal title to a trustee. The individual known as the trustee is given the legal right to manage the home and other assets, regardless of the proficiency of the grantor.

A Trust has lots of prospective benefits. It can address distinct family issues, offer tax breaks, and protect possessions for family members. An additional advantage of a Trust, especially as compared to a Guardianship, is its versatility.

Generally, there are two kinds of Trusts: Living Trusts and Testamentary Trusts.  A Living Trust is established while you are living. If revocable, you can alter it. If irrevocable, you cannot change it. A Testamentary Trust is established in your will. The Trust becomes irrevocable upon your death.

Power of Attorney

A Power of Attorney is a document a person signs to give someone they love the legal authority to represent them after they can no longer make decisions.  A Durable Power of Attorney is a document a person signs to give someone they trust the authority to help make decisions for them even if they can no longer make sound decisions. A durable power of attorney does not fail for the incompetency of the principal.

Healthcare Power Of Attorney

A Health Care Power of Attorney is a Durable Power of Attorney in which you designate somebody to make medical choices if you become incapable to make them.  You might provide your healthcare representative or patient advocate the right to make any medical decision that you might make, had you been able to act on your own, including the right to consent to the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining measures. You could restrict your health care agent’s power by putting constraints on exactly what your patient advocate is authorized to do.

Living Will

A Living Will is a statement that you wish to die a natural death. This states you do not want your life prolonged by artificial means if there is no practical hope of recuperation.

You have to make sure that your Living Will meets all requirements to be supported. Your Living Will ought to include particular statements and be correctly signed, witnessed, and notarized.

Living Will Checklist

You have to be at least eighteen years old and of sound mind for the living will to be performed. You will need to sign the document in the presence of two witnesses who are not related to you or your partner, who will not acquire home from you, who is not your doctor or staff members of your physician, any nursing home or group-care house, or anyone that has a claim against your estate. The file has to be sworn.

Your doctor has to determine that your condition is incurable or that you are in a persistent vegetative state for a Living Will to take effect. Once another doctor agrees with this medical diagnosis, extraordinary methods or feeding tubes can be kept or discontinued.

Extraordinary methods are defined as medical treatment that postpones the minute of death by sustaining, recovering, or supplanting a vital function. A person is in a consistent vegetative state when he or she is suffering from a sustained full loss of self-aware cognition and, without the use of remarkable means or feeding tubes, will die within a brief period of time.

If you have a Living Will and a Health Care Power of Attorney, the Living Will controls if there is a problem in between the two papers. If you do not have a Living Will, your Health Care Representative named in your Power of Attorney document can make the decision to cancel life support as stated in your healthcare Power of Attorney document.