JUNE 14 , 2010 VOLUME 17, NUMBER 19
Suppose for a moment that you are trying to get your financial affairs in order. You have been married for many years, and your spouse is gradually losing the capacity to make financial or planning decisions. You are pretty sure you know what your spouse would want, but he (or she) is no longer able to articulate those wishes. Is there anything you can do?
That was the dilemma facing Ollie Phillips, an Indiana resident. His wife Donna no longer had capacity to sign estate planning documents — or to manage her own affairs if anything should happen to him. The couple had earlier signed durable powers of attorney naming one another as agents, and both had identical wills leaving everything to one another and, on the second death, to charity (Mr. and Mrs. Phillips had no children).
In early 2008, 18 months after Donna Phillips had been diagnosed as suffering from dementia, Ollie Phillips signed a new living trust and transferred all the couple’s assets into the trust’s name. The trust named Mr. Phillips as trustee and a friend, Elizabeth Shoemaker, as successor. It provided that all the couple’s money would be used for the benefit of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips until both had died and, after the surviving spouse’s death, everything would be transferred to Ms. Shoemaker. Mr. Phillips signed all of the documents using his wife’s power of attorney.
Did Ollie Phillips have the power to effectively change his wife’s estate plan using the power of attorney? The question would be moot if he had outlived his wife, but he did not — he died less than a year after setting up the trust.
Shortly after Mr. Phillips died, another friend was appointed as guardian of Mrs. Phillips’ person and estate. The new guardian moved to set aside the trust Mr. Phillips had created, but after two days of hearings the trial judge upheld the trust and ordered the guardianship estate to pay the trustee’s legal fees incurred in defending the trust itself.
The Indiana Court of Appeals agreed with the trial judge. Of particular interest to the appellate court was the evidence adduced at trial about Mrs. Phillips having told the lawyer who drafted the trust that Ms. Shoemaker was “like a daughter” to the couple. The judges also pointed out that Mrs. Phillips remained the sole beneficiary of the trust until her death, and that there was no evidence that the trust was being mismanaged in any way. Evidence that Mrs. Phillips had more recently said that she thought Ms. Shoemaker was “money hungry” was not sufficient to allow the guardian to revoke the trust. The appellate court also agreed that Ms. Shoemaker’s legal fees to defend the trust should be paid by Mrs. Phillips’ estate. Matter of Phillips, May 17, 2010.
Does the Phillips case stand for the proposition that an agent can change the principal’s estate plan using a power of attorney at any time? No, it certainly does not. But in a specific case, with some indication of the wishes of the now-incapacitated person, and with a broadly-drawn power of attorney, it might be possible to make at least some changes. Among the safeguards in this case: the fact that Mrs. Phillips, if she once again became able to make decisions, could change the trust, and the involvement of a lawyer who interviewed her and worked with her to try to figure out how much her capacity (and wishes) could be protected.
