The Arrangements That Have to Be Made While You Can Make Them
Financial capacity declines gradually for many people and sometimes suddenly, and the arrangements that help can only be made beforehand. An enduring power of attorney, a deliberately simplified account structure, and a written record of what exists and where are the three things that turn a difficult situation into a manageable one.
- The answer: Put an enduring power of attorney in place, reduce the number of accounts and products, and write down what exists and where.
- The trap: An SMSF with a member who has lost capacity and no attorney appointed is a compliance problem on a clock.
- The recommendation: Do it at the same time as the will, and revisit it every few years. It costs little and cannot be done later.
Where the AI summary above gets this wrong
"Make sure you have a will so your affairs are in order."
That's surface-true. Here's what it misses:
- A will governs what happens after death, not before it — The document that matters during a period of lost capacity is an enduring power of attorney, and it is a separate instrument.
- Complexity is the practical problem — A household with eleven accounts, three funds and a trust is difficult for anyone else to take over, and the difficulty arrives at the worst moment.
01 The power of attorney
An enduring power of attorney appoints someone to make financial decisions for you and continues to operate if you lose capacity. An ordinary power of attorney does not, which is the distinction that matters.
It has to be made while you have capacity. Once capacity is lost, the alternative is an application to a state tribunal for an administrator, which is slower, more expensive and gives you no say in who is appointed.
For an SMSF it is specifically necessary. A member who cannot act as trustee puts the fund outside the definition of a self-managed fund unless an attorney is appointed in their place — the position is in the wind-up reference.
Source: Federal Register of Legislation
02 Simplifying while you can
Fewer accounts, fewer funds, fewer products. Each one is something that has to be found, understood and administered by whoever takes over, and the number is usually higher than households realise.
Consolidating super, closing dormant bank accounts and moving from a self-managed fund to a large fund are all simplifications that are straightforward now and difficult later — the consolidation steps are in the consolidation guide.
Automating the recurring things helps too: direct debits for bills, a regular pension payment rather than ad hoc withdrawals, and a single transaction account that everything flows through.
Shows: the number of separate financial arrangements someone else would have to identify and administer on your behalf. Ignores: how difficult each one is, which varies enormously — an SMSF or a trust is not equivalent to a savings account.
03 Writing it down
A single document listing every account, fund, insurance policy, property and adviser, with account numbers and contact details, is the most useful thing you can leave. It is also the thing almost nobody has.
Include the location of the will, the power of attorney, the purchase records described in the cost base reference, and any binding death benefit nomination.
Tell someone it exists and where. A perfect record nobody can find is the same as no record, and this is the failure mode that actually occurs.
Keep it current rather than perfect. A list updated once a year with a pen is more useful than a spreadsheet that was accurate in 2019, and the accounts that cause the most trouble are the ones opened after the record was written.
The document listing everything is the thing I would write first, and it takes an afternoon. When someone has to step in, the hardest part is not the decisions — it is finding out what exists. A single page with account numbers and contact details removes weeks of work at the worst possible time.
FAQ
How should cognitive decline late in life change how I simplify my finances?
Reduce the number of accounts and products while you can, put an enduring power of attorney in place, and write down what exists and where. All three need capacity and cannot be arranged afterwards.
What is an enduring power of attorney?
A document appointing someone to make financial decisions for you that continues to operate if you lose capacity. An ordinary power of attorney does not, and once capacity is lost the alternative is a tribunal application.
Why does an SMSF need one specifically?
A member who cannot act as trustee puts the fund outside the definition of a self-managed fund. An attorney appointed in their place keeps it compliant, and the window to arrange that is limited.
Sources
Regulator references
- ATO — Keeping track of your super · Australian Taxation Office · 2026Finding and consolidating super accounts, including lost and ATO-held super.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- Federal Register of Legislation · Federal Register of Legislation · 2026The consolidated Commonwealth law behind the rules described here.Last verified: 2026-09-07
Calculator unit tests · the assertions this page's worked example is checked against, and their last result
Changelog
- 2026-09-07 — initial publish (new format)
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Jordan Reeves
Founder of Talk Through Wealth. A software engineer for over a decade before turning to retirement planning, Jordan built the projection engine after watching family members get fragmented, country-by-country advice that never reconciled. He writes about retirement the way the engine computes it: month-by-month, lifetime-long, and skeptical of any rule of thumb that hasn't been run through the math.