That authority ends at death, however, notes Franchelle Millender, an elder-law attorney in Columbia, S.C.

WSJ: Money Issues of Surviving Spouses

Jim Hoefler, of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, who is the author of a recent book on death in America, notes that boomers have a fear their parents never knew: that an impersonal health-care system may hook them up to an array of beeping machines rather than admit failure.

ECONOMIST: Doctor-assisted suicide