 You know, we're living in a busy world. People are rushing, things are happening. One thing for sure, Alzheimer's will affect many, many people. You know that one-third of Americans over 85 are afflicted with the illness? In fact, 5.3 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease. Unless a cure is found, more than 16 million Americans will have the disease by 2050. Here's something, Alzheimer's disease is a sixth leading cause of death in America. One in three seniors die with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. So dementia is a serious problem and it affects your family, your loved one, your neighbor, your life. Dementia also affects your estate plan. Now there's two times that people with dementia or the families contact my office. It's when it's just beginning or when it's in advanced stages. It's a huge advantage to contact the office when there's just the early signs of dementia. So much can be done. Let me go into particulars. Number one, it affects your trust. Your trust takes care of you. But remember, you're trustee of your trust. You have to sign documents. You have to do trust business. Or if you have dementia, you can't do trust business because you lack the mental capacity to carry on those aspects of daily living. The second part of your estate plan that's affected by dementia is the durable power of attorney for property management and personal affairs. This is the document that allows a trusted loved one to sign for you when you have a mental condition or you're incapacitated. Bank accounts, tax forms, social security, other kinds of transactions are all affected by this durable power of attorney. You want to make sure that durable power of attorney is up to date. And finally, your advanced healthcare directive. Obviously, if you can't make intelligent decisions, someone, in case there's a medical emergency, has to make them for you. So these documents, the trust, the durable power of attorney, and the healthcare directive all need to be up to date. It's a good idea to contact the office at the early stages of dementia when we can revise those documents, review those documents, and make sure they're up to date so that you're properly taken care of or your loved one is properly taken care of. Now, if you happen to put this off and you contact the office after someone is well into that dementia, there's still stuff we can do. Now, what are we going to do? We're going to do a trust administration. We're going to put the next, the backup trustee in charge. It could be the surviving spouse. It could be a husband, a wife, it could be a son, a daughter, a best friend, a domestic partner. Whatever it is, we're going to follow the dictates of the trust and the other documents to get those people in place and instruct them on how to help manage the trust and how to care for the affected loved one. Look, I can't go into all the details of how dementia affects your life, your family, and your estate plan. But I can tell you this, be prepared early. Have that estate plan reviewed. There's so much to talk about. Give us a call.