Talking to Aging Parents About Estate Planning in Georgia
Nov 13 2026 14:00
Author: Stan Faulkner, Founder, Perigon Legal Services, LLC
Stan Faulkner is the founder of Perigon Legal Services, LLC and a Georgia-licensed attorney focused on estate planning, probate, and real estate matters. With over 25 years of legal experience and prior bar admissions in multiple states, he brings a practical, process-driven approach to helping clients plan ahead and navigate complex legal situations.
His work centers on guiding individuals and families through probate administration, guardianship matters, and estate planning, with an emphasis on clarity, proper execution, and avoiding preventable issues. Stan also supports real estate transactions through structured closing processes designed to keep matters organized from intake to completion.
T
alking to aging parents about estate planning in Georgia goes better with a reason, one question, and the right document to start with. The hard part is almost never the law. It is the opening sentence.
This comes up constantly in public. Over the past few months Georgia families have asked forums how to get through to a parent who refuses to plan, what to do about a parent who is evasive about documents, and whether an online form will do for a power of attorney. What follows is what we tell families in
Cherokee
and
Cobb County
who are trying to raise it before the holidays.
How do I bring up my parents' estate plan without it becoming a fight?
Start with a reason that is yours rather than theirs. The conversations that go well in Cherokee and Cobb County almost never open with you need to get your affairs in order. They open with something the adult child did first. I signed my own power of attorney last month, and it made me realize I do not know whether you have one.
Then pick the setting. A drive, a walk, a kitchen with the dishes running. Side by side goes better than face to face, and it gives everyone a graceful exit if it stalls.
Next step for a Georgia family: before Thanksgiving, sign your own
power of attorney
so that you can honestly say you did.
What questions should I actually ask my parents?
Ask about authority, not inheritance. Five questions cover almost everything. Who would make your medical decisions if you were in the hospital tomorrow? Who could legally sign if a bill had to be paid or the house had to be sold? Where are the documents kept, and who else knows? Who is named on your retirement accounts and life insurance? When did you last read your will?
None of the five asks who gets what. That is the question that turns a conversation into an argument, and it is not the one that matters first. In Georgia the documents that answer the first two are the financial power of attorney and the advance directive, not the
will
.
Next step: ask one of the five, not all five.
What if my parents refuse to talk about it at all?
Some will refuse, and pushing harder rarely moves someone who is frightened. One person on a caregiving forum described their parents plainly: they cope using avoidance and denial. Another asked how to help a mother with possible dementia when both parents said no.
What tends to help is shrinking the ask. Not a lawyer, not a plan, one document. Raise it again in a few months rather than a few days. And if a sibling has more standing with them, let the sibling ask.
Next step: if a parent in Cobb or Cherokee County will meet but not decide, we are glad to sit down with a parent and an adult child together and answer questions with nothing signed that day.
If my parents only sign one document, which should it be?
The financial power of attorney. A will does nothing until someone dies. A power of attorney works while your parents are alive, which is where nearly every family emergency actually happens.
With one in place, the named agent can pay a mortgage, deal with an insurer, talk to a bank in Woodstock or Marietta, and sign for property in Cherokee, Cobb or Forsyth County. Without one, the family finds out at the counter that nobody has authority, and the counter is not where anyone wants to learn it.
The health care side is the advance directive, and it is the natural second signature on the same afternoon.
Next step: read our
advance directive guide
before the appointment so the hard questions are not new ones.
Can I get power of attorney for my parent in Georgia?
Not on your own. A power of attorney is something your parent signs and gives. It is not something an adult child obtains. That surprises almost everyone who asks, and it is the most common misunderstanding we hear on this topic.
So the real question is never how do I get power of attorney. It is whether your parent is willing to sign one, and who they want named. A Georgia financial power of attorney can also name a successor agent to step in if the first cannot serve, and it can name co-agents and say whether they act together or separately.
Next step: a Woodstock resident recently asked a public forum whether to use an online form for exactly this. Bring the form you found to a
consultation
and we will tell you what it covers in Georgia and what it does not.
What happens if we wait until a parent cannot sign?
The window closes. A power of attorney has to be signed while the person signing it still understands what it does, so capacity is the gate. Once it is gone the family cannot create that authority after the fact, and what is left runs through a court process instead of a document.
That is the entire argument for having the conversation early, and it is why the useful question is who would be allowed to sign rather than who inherits.
Next step: if a parent's capacity is already in question, that is a conversation with their physician before it is a conversation about paperwork.
Does a will my parents signed twenty years ago still work?
It is probably still valid and probably out of date, which are two different problems. A neighbor in East Cobb put it exactly right on a neighborhood app: a lot has changed in the last twenty years, grandchildren, need to update.
The things that age a plan are ordinary. Births and deaths. A marriage or a divorce in the family. A house bought or sold. A move into Georgia from another state, since a document drafted elsewhere was formatted for another state's rules. A named executor who has died or moved away. And beneficiary forms nobody has read since the account was opened, which control the account no matter what the will says.
Next step: find the will, read who is named to be in charge, then book a review of the
estate plan
they already have.
Should my parents just use an online will instead?
Sometimes it works, and we will not pretend otherwise. Someone who has watched this play out wrote that many thousands of do it yourself plans have been carried out after death, the overwhelming majority without issue, some with major problems. That is an honest summary.
Where online plans fail in Georgia is narrower than people expect. The signing and witnessing has to match Georgia's rules. A
trust
has to be funded, which means a recorded deed and retitled accounts, or it keeps nothing out of probate. And if leaving the house to the children is the point, the mechanics matter more than the form, which we walked through in
How to Leave Your Home to Your Kids in Georgia
.
Next step: if your parents already used an online service, bring what they signed. Reading it costs less than redoing it.
How do we choose an estate planning attorney in Georgia?
Ask fewer credential questions and more process questions. On a planning forum, someone asking how to choose got this as the most upvoted answer: you do not need an elder law lawyer, you need a good estate planner, and you should not just pick the first result.
Four questions sort it quickly. Who will actually draft my documents and sign off on them? Is the fee flat or hourly, and what is included? Will you read what I already have before recommending anything new? And who do I call in three years when something changes?
Next step: our
Woodstock
and
East Cobb
offices work with families across Cherokee, Cobb, North Fulton,
Forsyth
, Hall and Gilmer County, and we are glad to start with a conversation.
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