Real Life | Visited Any Good Estate Plans Lately?

When’s the last time we paid our own wills and all of their documents-family siblings a visit? Or begun to create them, to begin with? Now that holiday season’s over and we’ve run out of dumb cop-out excuses to procrastinate, let’s do that.

Already doing it? Nice going! After all, we wouldn’t want to be caught dead or incapacitated with an outdated and obsolete plan, instruments that order the now-wrong fiduciaries to make the now-wrong decisions and to distribute the now-wrong property to the now-wrong people. Or to provide yesteryear’s care for our this-year’s changed needs and ‘druthers, or lag behind the evolving tax and legal rules, or conflicts with the laws of our new state of residence. Or still beneficiary insurance or pay-on-death bank accounts to ex-spouses and now-dead loved ones.

Sure, we already know that can be much worse than having no plan at all, and having no plan at all invites legal and financial disaster for everyone that’s impacted, too.

Jake and Lucy discovered that their wills’ trusted family-attorney personal representative now languishes hopelessly Alzheimer’s-afflicted. Beatrice’s will reminded her of the bequest earmarked for granddaughter’s education, but its designated investment account evaporated long-ago to cover Ben’s nursing home bill.

The attorney-in-fact in Buddy’s durable financial power of attorney now is on long-term assignment 10,000 miles away.

Good-intentions-but-no-action Meg died intestate (will-less), and now the family painfully suffers their needs and desires being overridden by the state probate officer’s dutiful application of unforgiving and rigid state law.

OK, I hear you murmuring: “Enough already, Gary, I get the message. But I’m stuck because I’m shaky about how to do it all, and frankly up-tight about encountering lawyers.”

Maybe I can help. The key to it all is to prepare thoroughly.

Try this agenda, one comfortable step at a time:

▪ Read up on, or take a course, to gain a confident working knowledge of all the basics of personal business. That’s a great idea for managing the enterprise that is you, anyway. Right?

▪ Do several deep soul-searching introspection sessions with yourself, to discover – Yes, discover – what you REALLY believe and want to happen when you’re incapacitated and when you die.

▪ Please remember to factor loved ones’ and beneficiaries’ needs, limitations, and best interests into the wish list.

While you’re thinking so deeply, how about creating ethical will legacy-letters bequeathing your unique from-the-heart thoughts, hopes, gems of your wisdom, and wishes for posterity?

Seek and heed the advice and knowledge of estate planning team members, such as the tax, investments, financial planning, wealth management, real estate, insurance, health care, pastoral, and legal advisors. And, yes, the appropriate family members.

Provide the team all the information and insights that you can – the more the better, of course – so they can tailor the best possible plan to suit you. You do your homework, and they’ll take it from there.

It’s worth the effort. Not only does that nicely organize your affairs, but of course the better you prepare, the better, quicker, and less costly the planning and legal work results will be. They’ll help, with step-by-step questionnaires, guidelines, and as-you-go guidance. They’ll teamwork with you, everyone working toward the same winning results.

The estate-planning-oriented attorney is the team leader, and if he/she is warm, nurturing, sympathetic, empathetic, helpful, and is a specialized expert, is the right one for you.

Be a hero. Give your spouse/partner the blessing of knowing how to manage without you. Partner with him/her in this teamwork. In fact, might he or she be even better at it than you are?

“Discovery”, the detective work of identifying and cataloguing everything in the business of our lives: It’s infinitely better to do discovery now than to force our responders to muddle blindly through it when dementia or death destroys our helpful ability to remember things. Watch for clues to possibilities that you don’t remember, or don’t even know about — in jacket pockets, under the dresser drawers and car seats, and stashed away in the old cardboard box in the back of the linen closet. The planning team, fiduciaries, and probably the probate officer, will need to know.

It’s sensible for us to “be on top of” everything about our business anyway, yes?

Describe, summarize, identify by name and number, evaluate both cost and current value. List who owns what and by what form of titling. Catalogue them in the Estate Operators’ Manual. (the “Mayday and Doomsday File”), your gracious gift to your responders and to yourself.

Aggressive discovery detective work “unearthed” Kathleen’s long-forgotten vested pension account from a forty-years-ago employer. Hit-and-miss detective work missed Rob’s paid-up life insurance account, over $ 60,000 beneficiaried to his widow, which the insurance company surprised her with after a decade of magnaminously searching for her, and just before escheating it to the state abandoned property agency.

After Mary died, the family penetrated her broom closet and found a carton of papers there, among them long-ago deceased George’s birth certificate. Guess what: He was a year younger than everyone, including himself, had thought. Even his epitaph is wrong. There wasn’t enough discovery effort when he died.

Pull out and review everything, to look for obsolete provisions, needing updates because of events or because you’ve decided to “do it differently”. Along with all the documents, information, instructions and desires, assemble several years’ income and tax data and the estate and inheritance taxes paid on assets that you’ve inherited. Be ready with the roster of fiduciaries, all vetted and with their concurrence, of course.

Then you’ll be equipped to maximize the process and minimize the cost. So, then visit the lawyer.

Bring your existing estate plan and appropriate family law documents, such as both the property and ethical wills, trust documents, powers of attorney, health care directives do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders, medical orders for life-sustaining treatment (MOLST), nuptial agreements, life insurance contracts and endorsements, death and disability benefits from banks and credit card issuers, disability income and accidental death insurance policies.

You’ll experience a skilled, responsive and supportive professional, teaming with you and advising you, to produce a product that you’re happy with. It will plan and mandate the management of you and your world when you’re in late-life, incapacity, and end-stage. Then, funeralities, at-death arrangements and events. Then, testamentary mandates: Who gets what, when, and how, who is to manage the process, and how.

Also, how about ethical will legacy-letters, bequeathing from-the-heart thoughts, hopes, gems of your wisdom, and wishes for posterity, brought to mind by your introspection?

After it’s happily done, you’re de-stressed and relaxed.

Congratulations! A trip to Disneyland, anyone? Whoa! Not yet: It’s time to update your Estate Operator’s Manual, the ”Mayday and Doomsday File”, that nightmare-avoiding single-source guide for your responders and fiduciaries, alerting them to everything that they need to know, and where to find all the files. It’d be super to add an estate-plan “roadmap”, too, and name its people and their roles. It’d be even more super to contribute a separate ethical will legacy letter to explain and amplify the “why’s” and your reasoning behind the estate plan’s mandates.

Everyone knows their DOB (date of birth), but since we don’t know our DOD’s (dates of death, disability, dementia), then shouldn’t we make that estate plan visit right away?

Enjoy! And success! You deserve it.

This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Real Life | Visited Any Good Estate Plans Lately?."