What to Consider If You Are a Snowbird?

If you’re one of the people who spend the warm part of the year in New Hampshire or Maine but seek Florida during the winter, be sure you know how this could include some of your existing estate planning or elder law documents.

If you spend the good part of the winter in Florida, it’s important to think about how this could potentially impact your estate planning. Snowbirds often split their time between two places but need to anticipate the property values and need for estate planning documentation.

Spending part of the year south can complicate your estate plan and having an existing relationship with a trusted estate planning lawyer can decrease your chances of facing these traps. You need to make sure first of all that you have documents in place for both your primary residence state and Florida or secondary state.

The basic estate planning documents include a living will, a durable power of attorney and a health care proxy. You should have versions of these documents for both of your states. While your existing health care proxy, living will and durable power of attorney should be accepted in Florida, however, unnecessary headaches can emerge in the event that you have out of state documents due to differences in naming conventions or processes.

Make sure that you have a relationship with an estate planning lawyer who understands these complications and can help guide you through updating your materials and ensuring that you have the proper documents in place for both locations where you live.

We can help you with your NH or ME estate planning documents and help you consider some of the more involved issues in splitting your time between two or more states.