Your Estate Plan: What Will It Take To Get Started?

Just because lawyers exist, this does not mean that it is impossible or inadvisable to follow the law on your own; the lawyers are there to give you advice or to speak on your behalf when things get complicated.  Personal injury lawyers represent people who have suffered severe injuries in car accidents, but most of us have filed our own insurance claims after a relatively minor collision.  Big businesses need lawyers to help them file their taxes, but you and I can just type numbers in boxes on a fillable PDF or go to a tax preparation office that is only open from February until April.  Some people even divorce without hiring lawyers.  Estate planning lawyers often help clients whose financial situations or family situations are complex, but you don’t have to have a family trust or a wicked stepdaughter to benefit from their advice.  If you think you are too poor for an estate plan, you are not; everyone needs one.  If you own anything or care about anyone in this world, the time to write a will is now.  Later on, you can contact an Orlando estate planning lawyer when you are ready.

Fear: A Powerful Motivation

According to a recent survey by Caring.com, only a third of American adults have an estate plan, defined as a will or written set of wishes about end-of-life medical care or the distribution of their assets.  Older people are more likely to have started on their estate plans, which means writing one usually happens when you realize that you are too old not to have one, that is, when the idea of not having an estate plan is scarier than the idea of death.  A lot of people get started on their estate plans when something happens that makes them realize that death can happen to anyone at any moment.  The survey found that people who had been seriously ill with a COVID infection during the pandemic were 66 percent more likely to have written a will than people who had never tested positive or whose COVID symptoms had been mild.

What Is Stopping You?

The Caring.com survey asked the people who did not have an estate plan what was stopping them from making one, and nearly half said that they intended to make one but simply had not gotten around to doing it.  Financial considerations were also a big reason for lack of estate plans among working-age adults.  Some of them thought that developing an estate plan would be expensive, while others believed that their property was not valuable enough for them to need an estate plan.

Contact Gierach and Gierach About Getting Over Your Fear of Estate Planning

An estate planning lawyer can help you think about the big picture about how you want your assets to provide for you and the closest people in your life and then develop a practical plan.  Contact Gierach and Gierach, P.A. in Orlando, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

cnbc.com/2022/04/11/67percent-of-americans-have-no-estate-plan-heres-how-to-get-started-on-one.html