Estate Planning for Mere Mortals - Become a Super Hero for Your Family

Estate planning is for old people in hospice, right? Don't estate planning lawyers hang around nursing homes looking for dying people who need wills? I'm young, healthy and make big money - what do I need with planning for incapcity, I'll do that when I'm old. What does it take for an otherwise intelligent, caring and responsible person to call an estate planning lawyer to get a will drafted and their affairs in order? Well, I just came back from my Summer vacation (in Alaska and Seattle) using the disgrace that is our national air travel system. Despite my conscious person knowing that the cab ride to the airport was many times more dangerous than the metal tube hurtling through the air at 600 miles an hour, I knew somewhere within me that at any time I could become dust. As a rule I travel with my immediate family all together, yet I know others that always separate their children and spouses on the theory that 'at least one of us will survive.' Statistically I don't know if they're better off or not. In the months after 9/11 I saw a huge influx of new estate planning clients, many of whom never had done any estate planning of any kind. These were people in their 50's and 60's who had never had a will let alone an asset protection or liability protection plan in place for their families or their businesses. They had just been too busy to get their affairs in order apparently. It took the realization that they could have been on those planes or they could have been at Windows on the World having a coffee and Danish. From discussions with colleagues in New York City many new high net worth estate planning clients came in who admitted that previously they thought themselves invincible, immortal or just plain luckier than those poor slobs that become incapacitated at a young age or die leaving their families in dire straits. Couldn't happen to them. Every day we see disasters, car accidents, epidemics, crimes that destroy lives and cause untold distress to whole families. I am proud to provide at least some measure of peace of mind to those that seek protection, or at least preparation, for the worst that this world has to offer. You would think that with the unending flow of misery leading our headlines that estate planning lawyers would be beating off the business with a stick - but rather, in my experience, people cower and convince themselves that it is always someone else therefore they need not take responsibility for their own situations. I have filing cabinets full of this flawed reasoning, and the files are labelled with such terms as probate, guardianship, bankruptcy, litigation. Do yourself a favor and get some estate planning done. It need not be expensive. It need not take a lot of your precious time. And it doesn't make you look weak - on the contrary it shows that you are strong enough to acknowledge your own mortality, which as you've seen before in this blog is really one of the few things that distinguishes humans from all other life forms on Earth. And yes, the cobbler's kids have shoes.