The Myth of the “Straightforward” Estate Plan

“We have a pretty straightforward situation, so it shouldn’t be too complicated or cost too much, right?”

We often get asked this question by prospective clients. It’s not really a question to us, though. Rather, it projects how the prospective client views both their situation and the estate planning process in general. They view their situation as uncomplicated, which is a veiled way to suggest that there’s little actual work involved. That as long as a client wants assets to pass, for example, to their spouse and children upon their death, then they just have to say some magic words to us and the legal fees magically vanish and we admit that estate planning is really just copying and pasting names into a word processor and then hitting “print.”

All snark aside, we take these expectations and assumptions seriously. It is an estate planner’s daily battle to combat these assumptions and to demonstrate that an effective comprehensive estate plan should include large doses of nuance.

There is no such thing as a straightforward estate planning situation. It just doesn’t work that way. Sure, wanting to care for your loved ones is a straightforward desire. How you intend on doing that is much less straightforward. And each person holds different values and priorities when it comes to caring for their loved ones.

Will you be incapacitated at any point before your death? Will your spouse be incapacitated when you die, or will they be perfectly healthy? Will they remarry? What if they remarry and have additional children? What if you are a part of a blended family? How old will your children be when you die? Will your death be a traumatic experience for them? What if one or more of your children are incapacitated when you die? What if you are old and gray when you die, but right when you die one of your children is amidst a messy divorce, bankruptcy, or are facing addiction issues?

I can keep going. We haven’t even discussed the size and extent of your estate, or whether there are assets that need special treatment. We haven’t discussed how exposure to taxes may impact your decisions. Or maybe you’re self-employed and we need to figure out how to continue the business, or wind it down, after your death. It gets less straightforward with each additional consideration.

It’s not about inserting names into templates. It’s about adding nuance, being advised of your options, carefully walking through hypothetical situations, and weighing the possibilities. It’s thinking through all of the contingencies so that your loved ones don’t have to.

You can contact us to schedule a free initial consultation to get the conversation started.