While You’re At It: Getting Your Own House in Order
Somewhere in the middle of helping a parent get organized, a quieter thought tends to arrive.
Wait. Do I have any of this in place myself?
If that thought has occurred to you, it isn’t a coincidence, and this isn’t a sales pitch. It is the most natural thing in the world. There is no clearer teacher about the value of being prepared than watching, up close, what unpreparedness does to someone you love.
You’ve now seen it. You’ve hunted for documents that turned out not to exist. You’ve untangled accounts. You’ve discovered that a form somebody filled out in 1998 quietly outranks a will. You know, in a way you didn’t six months ago, exactly what a gap costs.
The responsible move — the one that spares your own family this same scramble someday — is to put your own house in order now, while your window is wide open and all of this is fresh.
Three generations, one afternoon
For a lot of the people reading this, the situation is more layered than it first appears. You’re standing in the middle of what gets called the sandwich generation: aging parents on one side, and children of your own on the other.
Which means the very same gap can exist in three places in your family at once.
Your parents’ plan. The reason you started looking at any of this.
Your own plan. The durable power of attorney, medical power of attorney, HIPAA authorization, advance directive, and will or trust that would keep your family out of a courtroom if something happened to you. Ask yourself honestly what would happen tomorrow if you were the one in the hospital bed. If the answer involves your spouse guessing, or your kids arguing, or someone hiring a lawyer to get permission to help you — that’s the same gap you’ve spent months trying to close for your mother.
Your young adult children’s documents. And this one genuinely surprises people.
The eighteenth birthday problem
The day your child turns eighteen, you lose the legal right to make medical decisions for them. You also lose the right to be told anything about their medical care at all.
The same HIPAA wall that can leave you standing in a hallway unable to get a straight answer about your own mother works exactly the same way in the other direction, about your own son or daughter. Same statute. Same locked door. The hospital is not being difficult — it’s following federal law.
A college freshman needs a medical power of attorney and a HIPAA authorization every bit as much as your parent does. Add a durable financial power of attorney if they’re out of state, handling their own bank account, or on a lease.
It is a short stack of paper, it takes very little time, and it is the difference between a phone call that gets answered and one that doesn’t.
Same gap. Opposite end of life.
Why doing all three together makes sense
People tend to treat these as three separate projects and then never finish the second and third one. There’s a better way to think about it.
The financial picture you’ve already built for your parent is most of the work. You now know what a complete inventory looks like, why beneficiary designations override the will, what a durable power of attorney does that a joint account doesn’t, and what happens when the execution is sloppy. You learned all of that the expensive way, on someone else’s plan.
Applying it to your own is comparatively easy — and doing it while everyone in the family is healthy means the conversations are simple ones. Nobody is negotiating anything. Nobody is being told they can’t manage their own life. You’re just three generations getting organized on an ordinary Tuesday.
There’s also a practical benefit that families don’t expect: it gives you a natural, non-threatening way back into the conversation with a resistant parent. “I’m getting my own documents in order, and it made me realize we’d never talked about yours.” That sentence opens doors that a direct approach closes, because it isn’t about their decline. It’s about your planning.
Where to start
Run the same short list for three people — your parents, yourself, and any child eighteen or older:
Durable financial power of attorney. Medical power of attorney. HIPAA authorization. Advance directive. Will or trust. For each one: does it exist, is it the right kind, was it signed correctly, and can anyone actually find it?
That’s the whole audit. Most people can do it in an evening, and most people find at least one gap they didn’t know about.
Then, when you’re ready to put the pieces in place, that’s what an estate planning attorney is for — not to sell you anything you don’t need, but to make sure what you build actually holds. For your parents, for you, and for the kids who will one day stand exactly where you’re standing now.
The window is a family trait. Fixing your parents’ gap and leaving your own wide open is the trap I’d most like you to avoid.
That’s really the whole of it. Not fear. Not mortality. Just responsibility, done in time — the quiet, unglamorous act of love that all of this has been about from the beginning.
The rest of the map. This is one chapter of The Aging Parent Playbook, a free guide I wrote both as an estate planning attorney and as a son currently walking through this with my own mother. It comes with a companion workbook of checklists and worksheets — which documents to find, what to gather, how to open the conversation. Get the free guide and workbook.
If you’d rather just talk it through, book a free 15-minute call and we’ll figure out what your family should handle first.
About Me
Jeremy Cleverly is an estate planning attorney who helps families put thoughtful plans in place for the people they love most.
His work focuses on helping parents protect minor children, prepare young adults for greater independence, and assist families navigating the legal and practical concerns that come with aging parents. He also helps individuals and couples create clear plans for incapacity, inheritance, family responsibilities and the transfer of assets.
With more than two decades of legal experience, Jeremy takes a practical, personal approach to estate planning. He begins with the family, the goals and the concerns—not the documents—then builds a plan designed to provide clarity, reduce conflict and protect what matters most.
Outside the firm, Jeremy serves on the executive board of the Aledo Education Foundation, on the board of Big Country Veterans, and on the finance committee at Aledo United Methodist Church.
He is a past President of the Ellis County Bar Association and has served on the board of the Stephen F. Austin State University Alumni Association. He has taught business law as an adjunct professor, judged business pitch competitions and guest lectured at Stephen F. Austin State University, and speaks about estate planning on podcasts and video interviews. He is a former member of Cowtown Angels, the Fort Worth angel investment network.
Before and alongside his legal practice, Jeremy founded and led Bumps and Bruises Pediatric Urgent Care, which he scaled and sold to a private equity-backed buyer. He later acquired a commercial landscaping company, rebranded it, built out its systems and processes, and sold it as well, and has helped run a third company through a venture-backed incubator. Business owners tend to find their way to him for that reason: when the conversation turns to succession, he has been on the other side of it.
Author Bio
Jeremy Cleverly is the founder and principal attorney at The Cleverly Law Firm, where he brings more than two decades of legal experience to estate planning for Texas families. As a husband and a father, he understands what is actually at stake in this work. His approach begins with the family, the goals and the concerns — not the documents.
His practice focuses on helping parents protect minor children, preparing young adults for greater independence, and guiding families through the legal and practical questions that come with an aging parent. He also helps individuals and couples create clear plans for incapacity, inheritance and the transfer of assets — plans built to work in real life, reduce conflict, and hold up when a family needs them most.
