Even though you might realize exactly how important it is, there may be some significant reasons as to why you still don’t have an estate plan. Most Americans don’t have any kind of estate plan in place at all, while even the wealthiest Americans can be woefully unprepared for what their future estate planning needs might hold. Why is this? Why do even the most intelligent, well educated, and well off people often fail to have an estate plan? While there is not one single answer to this question, there are a couple of common reasons.
Why You Still Don’t Have an Estate Plan. You are young.
Estate planning is an old person’s concern, or at least that is what the common wisdom would have us believe. After all, only old people get sick, have any significant property to protect, or are at risk of dying. While it is true that seniors are much more likely to face estate planning situations than younger people, that doesn’t mean young people don’t need an estate plan.
In fact, young people who are in a relationship, who have young children, or who have specific wishes about what they might want to happen to them if they are ever incapacitated absolutely need an estate plan. Not only that, but even a simple estate plan that will protect your desires regardless of what the future holds is far better than having no plan at all and leaving important, and unanswered, questions up to your close family members to decide for you.
Why You Still Don’t Have an Estate Plan. You’re scared of dying.
Perhaps the most common reason, and often the most difficult to overcome, why people don’t have an estate plan is because they fear their own mortality or the mortality of their closest loved ones. Dealing with the fear of death is something that all of us have to confront at one time or another, and all of us must do so in our own ways. This fear might persist for the rest of your life, and might be more intense at some point in your life then on others.
So how do you get past it? There is no simple answer to this question, but there is a way, perhaps, to refocus your worries. Many people find that focusing not on yourself, but on the lives, needs, and hopes of your closest family members and loved ones can make it a lot easier to make an estate plan. If you focus on the problems they might face should something ever happen to you, you might find it easier to create a plan that will protect them in their time of need.
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