 |
Advisor Highlight: Meg Obenauf
Aid and Advice After the Maui Fires
Meg Obenauf, a 2018 HCF Professional Advisor in Philanthropy awardee, has been a pillar in the Maui legal community for more than a quarter of a century. Her career on the Valley Isle began when she responded to a Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i job posting she found at the Harvard Law School Career Services Center. “I faxed my resume, interviewed over the phone, and they offered me the position as a Legal Aid attorney on Maui,” Obenauf recalls. Her first job out of law school, it marked the beginning of Obenauf’s dedicated service to the island’s residents.
Today, her practice, Obenauf Law Group, is nestled in a restored plantation house on Vineyard Street in Wailuku. Specializing in estate planning, trusts, and wills, her firm also handles uncontested probates, conservatorships, and guardianships. “We’ve been practicing here for 26 years,” Obenauf says, striving to help Maui families pass on their wealth simply, without conflict or drama, as well as creating customized plans to protect their money and property from the ravages of nursing home and long-term care costs when an older family member is no longer able to care for themselves.
In the aftermath of the devastating Maui fires last year, Obenauf’s commitment to her community shone brightly. Just two days after the fires, she was on the ground helping survivors. She volunteered with nonprofit food distribution efforts to feed survivors, and offered free legal expertise, staffing the Legal Aid booth at the Lahaina Civic Center as well as volunteering for a phone hotline set up by the Hawai‘i State Bar Association. Obenauf also had clients who were fire survivors in need of help.
One particularly poignant case involved a 90-year-old woman and her disabled son in his 60s. “She escaped the fire with her son in a wheelchair, which was nothing short of miraculous,” Obenauf says. The woman needed legal assistance for guardianship and estate planning, as well as ADA-compliant housing. Obenauf’s firm helped her secure all the necessary legal documents, and her client ultimately found ADA-compliant housing through FEMA.
Preparing for the Worst
Now, as she deals with a dozen complex probate cases a year after the fires, Obenauf underscores the critical importance of being prepared for disaster, or any remote risk of dying or becoming incapacitated, to ensure the smooth management of our affairs according to our wishes, regardless of the circumstances.
“I think because we tend to procrastinate, or we think it’s going to be expensive, or we just don’t want to think about it,” people tend not to have a power of attorney in place, Obenauf says. But when a crisis strikes, a power of attorney can obviate the lengthy and complex process of establishing a conservatorship, which involves filing paperwork and waiting months for a hearing, a public determination of capacity, and significant legal costs. In contrast, setting up a power of attorney is straightforward. “It’s quick, it’s easy. Legal Aid can do it for you. And, if the individual loses capacity, a power of attorney enables the creation of an estate plan and will on their behalf,” she says.
Her advice for your clients is simple and clear: “Get a power of attorney. It’s the number one thing everyone over the age of 18 should have.”
|