Everyone Should Have A Living Will

 by: David G. Hallstrom, Sr.

According to information provided by http://www.plan-my-estate.com an an estate planning and asset protection resource web site, a living will, known in most states as a Directive to Physicians or Healthcare Directive, sets out your wishes about what extended medical treatment should be withheld or provided if you become unable to communicate those wishes. The directive creates a contract with the attending doctor. Once the doctor receives a properly signed and witnessed directive, he or she is under a duty either to honor its instructions or to make sure you are transferred to the care of another doctor who will.

There is an old saying, “nothing is sure in life except death and taxes”. Whether you like it or not, someday you will die. How you die and how it effects the people you leave behind can be affected by whether or not you have a living will.

Say you feel that if you develop an inevitably fatal illness, you do not want any extreme measures taken to prolong your suffering or to cause you additional suffering or loss of dignity while you are dying. Say you have a massive stroke and end up in a coma and according to the doctors you are brain dead or completely unresponsive. You are being kept alive by a bunch of machines and tubes. Now say you had previously told someone, your spouse, one of your children or a parent, that you did not want to be kept alive by extreme measures. That person tells the doctor that you would not want to be kept alive by a machine, however, another family member, who can not take the thought of your dying, tells the doctor that you wanted to be kept alive by any means possible. Now, there is a problem. Remember the seven (7) year court battle over Terri Schiavo.

Both family members love you and both want to do what is best, however they disagree and end up causing great emotional distress to each other and to other people who love you, as well as forcing you to be kept ailve against your wishes while the matter is being settled, and as well as running up considerable medical and legal expenses that have to be paid by someone. None of this would have taken place had you taked the time to have a living will prepared.

Conversely, say that you would like to receive all medical treatment that is available, no matter what. Since you can not speak for yourself, your spouse or a loved one, not knowing your wishes and who believes in dying with dignity, tells the doctor to turn off the machines and let you die. No one else knows what you wanted so the machines are turned off and you die. Had you taken the time to have a living will prepared they would have tried to keep you alive.

The foregoing examples are very black and white and most incidences will vary in various shades of grey, however I hope that you will understand the point that I am trying to get across.

Note: I am not an attorney or a doctor and none of the foregoing should be construed as legal or medical advice. This article is written strictly as my opinion based on life experiences through both my personal life and my work as a private investigator when investigating family disputes. As in all matters of law you should always consult an attorney before taking on any legal endeavor.

Whether you are married, single, young, old, healthy or ill, a living will is an inexpensive way of insuring that your wishes are carried out in the event that something untoward happens. It could also spare your loved ones the emotional distress of being forced to make such an important decision for you. Please visit this website for Estate Planning

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Construction Defects Attorney

If you have a problem with something that you purchase in a store, you can simply return the item most of the time and get a refund or another item that isn’t damaged. In the new home building construction business, this isn’t exactly how it works, all of the time.

All of the products that are purchased are brought to the job site and assembled into the new home. If any of these items are damaged, there’s a good chance that they will need to be removed, if possible and returned to the store that they were purchased from to make the exchange.

That’s okay and usually works… sometimes. If you install a couple of boxes of floor tile and you notice that there is a flaw of some sort after you have installed them, I don’t think the store is going to be happy or interested in having you return floor tiles that have tile grout or adhesive dried on to the back of them.

In other words, some new home construction defects are going to be bigger problems than others. If you notice there’s a chip in a piece of tile, bathroom sink or even a light fixture, don’t bother to install it in the new house. This is the point when it needs to be returned for an undamaged item.

By now you’re probably wondering, wouldn’t everybody do this, isn’t this kind of stuff called common sense. Not when someone’s in a hurry and isn’t really worried about the finished product. The biggest problems with construction defects in new homes is building materials that get damaged by other workers or building materials that are already damaged and installed anyway.

There’s not a lot that you’re going to be able to do about building materials that become damaged after they are installed, but there is something that you can do before they are installed.
We are dedicated to the successful representation of homeowners and homeowner associations in construction defect matters. Please visit our Website here
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If you have recently purchased a home, or are about to do so, you owe it to yourself and your family to understand everything that should be done to make sure that you know everything you need to know about the premises in question. One of the most overlooked aspects of purchasing any home is understanding how construction defects affect new and used home buyers.

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