If you have been putting off estate planning or having conversations with your family members about it, you’re definitely in the majority. So many people don’t want to broach the topic of their own planning, much less make it a featured conversation with their family members.
But the truth is that if you don’t talk about it now, your loved ones will be forced to talk about it later. A lack of planning can land your loved ones in probate court trying to sort out your estate, a situation that gets more complex if intestate succession laws don’t align with your intentions or if family members don’t agree.
Many adults find it difficult to talk even with their married partners about their plans for their financial future, but this situation gets even more complex when you think about aging parents.
A study published by Age Wave, the Harris Poll and Edward Jones found that the top issues that come up as a problem are being concerned about burdening family members with finances, avoiding family conflicts and being too uncomfortable to bring up these topics overall.
This makes it all the more important to schedule a consultation with an estate planning lawyer to talk about some of your key estate planning strategies and goals for your own legacy into the future. This can help you get clarity on what you want going forward and give you a basic idea of how you can open these conversations with your loved ones.
Often the way you open the conversation can have important implications for the entire family and the structure of the talk with your elderly parents. Knowing what you want and how you intend to protect your own loved ones is probably something that you share in common with your family members even if they haven’t yet realized that estate planning is a key way to do this.
Contact our Pasadena estate planning lawyers if you want more help approaching this topic.
