leGalreadineSSandthe“ deathPaCket”
Military & Veterans affairs Committee Co-Chairs: SteveCollins – UnitedStatesAirForce & AmandaAllen – BayAreaLegalServices
Servicememberenteringtheater shoulddosowiththeconfidence thattheirlegalaffairsarein orderandthattheirfamilieswill beprotectediftheworstoccurs.
For those of us who have sifted through what my unit lovingly referred to as the“ death packet” before deployment, it was often the first time we confronted a very real possibility. The packet, roughly thirty pages long, contained a series of blunt questions: Who gets what? Who should make decisions on your behalf? What song should be played at your funeral?
For some senior leaders, it was just another administrative step before boarding the plane. The forms were signed quickly and filed away with the rest of the pre-deployment paperwork. In hindsight, that casual treatment should have been a red flag.
The packet itself was meant to address a serious problem: most people underestimate the importance of planning for worst-case scenarios. The forms attempted to simplify complicated legal decisions through standardized language and checkthe-box options. But those generic pages, filled with boilerplate language, left little room for the complexity of real life.
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