“Estate planning” means making provisions for the dispersal of your assets after your death. Lawyers will tell you estate planning is the same for people with and without families. While it may be that way for lawyers, it’s very different for people trying to put their affairs in order.
Estate planning as discussed in articles and at workshops almost entirely around family, so much so that Nolo.com, a great source of free, understandable information about legal issues, defines estate-planning as “the process of getting your affairs in order so that you make things easier for your surviving family members when the time comes.”
If you don’t care about making life easier for your surviving family and there’s no hostile family member likely to contest your will, most of what’s covered in presentations and articles about estate planning will be irrelevant to you. At the same time, things that are important to you won’t be discussed at all.
Nonetheless, if you care about what happens to your assets after you die, you need to take action while you’re still alive and mentally competent. Legal documents such as wills, trusts and various types of beneficiary declarations give you control over what happens to your assets and who manages your estate after you die.
These documents are hard to think about for many reasons. They’re our ultimate admission of mortality. They conjure up the image of expensive, self-important attorneys and the stilted language of legal documents. And for people without family, they remind us that we need to find someone to inherit our assets and bring closure to our affairs.
If we don’t take action while we’re competent, the state determines who receives our assets, as follows: our spouse, our children, our parents, our siblings, the children of our siblings, and finally the state (if there’s anything left after the legal costs incurred in sorting out this succession).
The Estate Planning Process
To begin, you’ll need to decide who gets what. Estate-planning workshops generally have little to say about this, on the order of “Make it very clear who gets the grandfather clock” (and don’t forget the non-profit sponsoring this workshop). But for me and no doubt others without family, this first step of estate planning is a stumbling block. And this is just the first step! (Deciding Who Gets What)
Another question that must be resolved as part of estate planning is who will carry out your wishes after you die – your executor (“personal representative”) or “successor trustee.” This question too is generally ignored in estate planning presentations because it’s assumed that a spouse or child will fill this role. The discussion is about whether your sensible daughter who lives across the country is a better choice than your flighty daughter who nearby. (Designating Your Executor)
Finally, you must choose, among the variety of legal documents available – wills, trusts, beneficiary declarations – which you’ll use in finalizing your decisions.
It’s taken some effort to find good information about estate planning that doesn’t speak to potential family concerns. The tasks of preparing documents may be the same for lawyers, but people with and without families will have different priorities that alter the cost/benefit balance of the various estate planning documents.
For example, most lawyers say they like trusts because they’re better for families. (They’re also better for the lawyer’s bottom line.) They dislike wills because they require probate, a verification process for wills that takes place after you die. If you’re not worried about making things easier for your family, why pay for trust preparation now rather than have your estate pay for the probate process later. (Estate Planning Documents)