Key factors that often spur estate planning decision making

On Behalf of | Mar 23, 2020 | Estate Planning And Administration |

Here’s a time-honored truism about estate planning for New York residents and other individuals across the country: It is seldom the case that any person gets proactive about crafting a strategy and plan absent some motivating factor for doing so.

That’s not simply to say that most of us are sofa surfers when it comes to taking action concerning our families, finances, health and other important matters. Rather, it’s just human nature that most people are a bit passive in acting without some advance catalyst compelling them to do so.

That inertia is underscored in a recent Forbes article. That piece notes that it can generally be “very challenging” to move forward with planning. Doing so often brings a quick and up-close appraisal with death, end-of-life health-linked matters, complex family realities relevant to beneficiary naming and inheritances and more. Strong emotions can be triggered. It is often easier to assume a “there’s lots of time, so let’s wait a bit” attitude.

That putting off can have materially adverse consequences, a fact that is recurrently borne out in the annals of estate planning articles and anecdotes.

Forbes duly stresses that it logically takes some seminal happening to arise before an individual or family will turn with vigilance to sound and tailored planning. The publication states that, “There are several life events that will trigger the need to create an estate plan for a family or business.”

We suspect that many of our Pope Law Firm blog readers can readily tick off some of those. We enumerate a few on our website.

Forbes, too, spotlights a number of them, which range broadly from marriage/divorce, family births and business start-ups to a material variance in wealth, tax law changes and the passing of a loved one.

Those are all significant events, of course, and logically dictate for many people that they do need to get proactive about planning.

An established estate planning law firm can help guide them through the process and help to ensure that their best interests are accurately identified and fully promoted.