End-of-life planning

A good plan removes uncertainty for your family. It will make your wishes known about every aspect of your life. It will include directions for:

• Medical treatment.
• How you want your assets distributed.
• Who will be your personal decision-makers.
• How you want your values, memories and legacy to be remembered.

How Everence and others can help

An Everence representative can help you think about life’s big moments of transition, including insights on directives for medical treatment, estate planning, personal representatives and thinking about passing along your memories, faith values and legacy.

Download "Making your wishes known" as a starting point for understanding what your final acts of stewardship could look like.

If an accident or serious illness put you in the hospital and you were unable to make medical decisions for yourself, your immediate family members would need to make decisions for you. Do they know your wishes?

Consider three ways to communicate your advance directives:

• A living will outlines what medical treatments you want (or don't want).
• Power of attorney for medical decisions lets you designate who is authorized to make decisions for you.
• A Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment form specifies treatments for end-of-life.

You can visit websites such as Five Wishes, POLST, or Living Will Registry to get help documenting your decisions and making them official.

How Everence can help

Learn more about living wills, how to designate a power of attorney, and POLST forms. 

If you don't have a will, the state will decide how your estate will be distributed when you die and who will receive what. You should write a will to make sure you get to decide what happens to your estate. If you have minor children or other dependents, your will designates how they will be cared for if you die. You also can decide what happens to property such as cars, personal collections and family heirlooms. Some people include donations to their church or a charity in their wills. We advise that you develop your will with the help of a trusted lawyer licensed in the state where you live.

How Everence can help

Everence can help you create a plan for your assets and serve as a fiduciary executor for your will.

Will Preparation Grant: Everence offers its members a grant toward the cost of creating a new will or updating an outdated will.

A trust is a document that describes how your property and other assets are managed for the benefit of others. You can establish a trust for many reasons, but mostly it helps protect or preserve your assets for your heirs. A trust can be used to care for dependent loved ones, make gifts to charity and manage estate tax issues.

How Everence can help

Our professionals can help you determine if a trust is right for you, as well as offer assistance in choosing the right kind of trust to fit your needs. We can also serve as a fiduciary of your trust, and/or establish and administer your trust. 

A power of attorney is the official term for someone legally appointed to make personal decisions on your behalf. You can decide if this person is authorized to make financial, medical or other decisions and how much power he or she has. Other people or institutions who you legally assign to carry out your decisions are the executor of your will, the trustee of any trusts you have set up, and a guardian for your children.

Meet with your lawyer to draw up the legal documents to make the power of attorney official. A lawyer will also work with you to develop a will that designates an executor and guardian. The trustee for your trust is assigned in your trust documents.

How Everence can help

You can assign Everence as your fiduciary, which means we would make financial decisions for your trust. As experienced professionals that shares your values, you can trust that Everence would act on your wishes as you lay out in your documentation.  Get more details about what the types and roles of the decision-makers in your life.

Write down your decisions and communicate them with your family and friends to make sure that your values and legacy last into the future. You could make decisions about:

• How to handle your remains.
• What your obituary should say.
• If you would like gifts toward charity in your memory.
• If there is anything you want to include in your memorial service.
• Who to notify on your passing.
• How your family can find your important documents.

How Everence can help

Download our free Personal Financial Affairs Directory and use it as a place to record all your important information for your loved ones.