Getting Over Estate Planning Procrastination
If you are in your forties and employed, and especially if you have children, it is safe to assume that you have developed the skill of planning and sticking to your plans. You schedule and attend doctors’ appointments for yourself and your children, you gather your tax documents and file your income tax returns, and you research prices on travel tickets and accommodations months before a trip. In other words, you have been adulting since before it had a name. Why, then, have you not started on your estate plan? If the fact that more than six million people worldwide have died from COVID-19 in the past two years, some of them younger than you, is not enough to convince you that, at any moment, you could go from being you to being an estate, then what is? The time to get started on your estate plan is now. If you are the kind of person who likes to do everything on your own without hiring professionals, then the best place to start is to download forms online and get as far with them as you can without asking for help. If you prefer to strategize with a knowledgeable person before deciding (alone or with your spouse, depending on your marital status) what you want for yourself and for the generations after you, contact a Tampa estate planning attorney.
What Is Scarier: Death or Estate Planning?
According to Lorie Konish of CNBC, Caring.com recently conducted a survey of adults who have not yet reached retirement age; only a third of the participants said that they had an estate plan. Meanwhile, participants who had become ill with COVID during the pandemic were 66 percent more likely to have an estate plan than participants who had never tested positive for COVID or who had experienced a breakthrough infection with mild symptoms.
Perhaps the pandemic made young and middle-aged adults aware of their mortality, to the point that the thought of their families having to figure out what to do about their property, in the event of the participant’s death, or medical care, in the event that the participant suffered permanent ill health from COVID, was scary enough to make them write a will. Fear is a highly motivating factor in estate planning. A lot of people write a will because they have minor children and want to have some say in what will happen if the testator dies before the children reach adulthood.
You Are Not Too Young or Too Poor for an Estate Plan
When asked why they haven’t written a will, most estate plan-less participants said that they just hadn’t gotten around to it. Others said that they didn’t think they needed an estate plan because the value of their assets was modest. In fact, you don’t have to be rich to need an estate plan. If there is anyone in the world that you care enough about to want to protect them from probate disputes, then you need an estate plan.
Contact David Toback About Making the First Move in Estate Planning
A Central Florida estate planning lawyer can help you build a preliminary estate plan, which you can and should revise as you get older and your financial situation changes. Contact David Toback in Tampa, Florida to set up a consultation.
Sources:
cnbc.com/2022/04/11/67percent-of-americans-have-no-estate-plan-heres-how-to-get-started-on-one.html
