Many people do not have estate plans. The reasoning is often that it just feels too early in life. They’re not going to need that estate plan for 20 or 30 years. Life is going to change a lot in that time, so any estate plan they make today would be massively outdated by the time their family actually used it.
This is a good point in that an estate plan can become outdated and ineffective. It could even increase the amount of conflict among family members because it won’t appropriately address family dynamics or assets at the time.
But that doesn’t mean that people should wait to write an estate plan, as they could pass away unexpectedly before they get around to doing it. So what should you do instead?
Updating the estate plan
If you’ve been putting off your estate plan for this reason, just remember that you can always make a plan today and then update it in the future. Nothing that you decide today has to stay that way forever. Life changes, you just adjust the existing plan so that it fits.
There are two general schools of thought about how to do this, both of which can work. Some people will try to identify important life events, such as getting married or having a child, and they’ll make updates at those times. Other people will just make periodic updates, such as reviewing their estate plans every year.
But no matter what you choose, this is often a safer tactic than procrastinating estate planning entirely. Just be sure you know what legal steps to take while getting all of the documentation in place.