What’s holding you back when it comes to estate planning?

On Behalf of | Sep 20, 2019 | Blog

You may answer this question by saying that you just haven’t had the time to think about it. Perhaps the subject of estate planning isn’t even on your radar yet because you feel you are too young to consider it.

While these seem to be perfectly logical reasons for not getting your estate planning done, they may only scratch the surface of why you really haven’t done anything to prepare for your incapacitation or demise.

The most common reasons people avoid estate planning

Perhaps there is actually a deeper, more personal reason why you have yet to create an estate plan to protect your and your loved ones. Below are the most common reasons why people delay, and one or more of them may ring true for you:

  • No one wants to contemplate their own death, and you may not want to “tempt fate” by discussing it.
  • Even if you do want to discuss it, your spouse and other family members may tell you they don’t want to think about it and refuse to talk it over with you.
  • Perhaps you want to take care of this issue, but you can’t seem to figure out how to make everyone happy. You may have a child who needs more help while another is already self-sufficient and successful in his or her own right.
  • You fear that uneven distributions could cause tension among your loved ones after your death, and since no one wants to sit down and discuss it, you just keep putting off getting your plan in place.
  • Perhaps you have children from a prior relationship, a new spouse and stepchildren. You want to be fair, but it’s possible that no one will be happy with what you decide.
  • Maybe you just don’t want to spend the money right now. Well, you can pay it now, or your family will pay it later if you have no plan in place.
  • You could think that, once you have an estate plan, you no longer have control over your assets. Fortunately, that’s not true.

One last commonality among people who have yet to engage in estate planning is that they don’t want to involve an attorney. This may have to do with the cost issue mentioned above. What you need to know is that you can pay now to make sure you have the best plan possible in place, or your family can spend more than that later when they end up in court arguing over who gets what. In these cases, the court and the state of Nevada get to decide where your assets go.

If you create an estate plan now, you retain control over what happens to your estate upon your death. You choose the people who represent you and make decisions for you in powers of attorney, wills, trusts and other documents you may need in order to complete your estate plan. Don’t let anything keep you from doing what you can to protect yourself and your loved ones if you are not able to do so any longer.