Estate planning is an important part of your financial planning, but can be confusing. And estate planning can be even more intimidating if you’re terminally ill. In this article, I’ll answer the most common questions about estate planning if you’re terminally ill.
Too few people realize the sweat and hassle that goes into selling a deceased person’s home. Why burden yourself (or your heirs) with that responsibility when you can hire a professional executor—someone who has the skills and know-how to take care of every last detail for you?
When folks reach out about hiring me as their executor, price is top of mind for many (if not all). So let’s go over what it costs to hire a professional executor, including fees and other expenses. We’ll start with the basics.
This is a very common question that we get from Solo Agers. We’ll review the pros and cons of making that decision.
I do serve as a professional trustee, not just executor, or our Solo Ager clients. We’ll cover why our Solo Ager clients are looking for a professional trustee, why they don’t use banks, and how much it costs to hire a professional trustee.
Physician-Assisted Dying has other names that might be familiar: death with dignity, aid in dying, assisted death, euthanasia, and assisted suicide
Since we’ve received many inquiries from our Solo Agers, here some of your FAQs:
Can my professional executor help make arrangements from Switzerland after I pass?
Switzerland is often the go-to jurisdiction, but there may be others in the U.S. The medical facilities need to know who to notify upon death, and we have filled the role as the entity to be notified. You also need to make arrangements to send final personal effects (phone, wallet) after your passing. Again, we have been in that role before, and we have coordinated the receipt of the personal belongings.
If you are scheduling a physician-assisted death, you have to weigh the balance between preparing and living your life to the fullest.
We get calls from Solo Agers who are very focused on preparing and tying up any loose ends (cleaning out and selling their home). Our advice is to go ahead and take care of the low-stress items but leave the rest to us. It is our job to figure things out upon your passing, and it’s very unlikely that you will think of everything that needs to be done anyway. There is a limit to how much you will be able to help us, no matter how hard you try. Most folks have not gone through probate enough to know what needs to be done, so it’s better to let us handle it. Most people pass away unexpectedly and most things are generally unorganized anyway.
Instead, do your best to enjoy your remaining time and complete that bucket list!
Do I need to tell my executor that I plan to have a physician-assisted death? It’s totally up to you; we’ve dealt with both.
Telling us helps us be ready on the scheduled date. But if you prefer your privacy, it’s no problem; we’ve done that too. Most deaths are unexpected, so we are used to it.
Perhaps your loved ones don’t know that your death was planned. As professional executors, we know how to handle the situation tactfully.
Click the link below to check out my book, “The Solo Ager Estate Plan.” This topic is not covered specifically in my book, but it will help you learn more about probate in general.
Complete this form to receive your complimentary copy of Anthony’s Amazon best-seller, “The Solo Ager Estate Plan”
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Our Solo Agers friends often ask this when they’re ready to name me executor in their will. We support well-done DIY wills and anything that helps make your plan as frictionless as possible. Some kind of plan is almost always better than no plan!
So, do you need a lawyer to make a will? No, we’re not aware of any state that requires a lawyer to make your will. We do nonetheless recommend that our Solo Agers at least hire a lawyer to supervise the signing. Here’s why:
A signing ceremony sounds like a long, drawn-out event, but it could last as little as 15 minutes. Still, there are many technicalities to follow, or else the will may be invalid.
Just a few examples, the person making the will (the testator) has to make a proper declaration in the will. The pages of the will must also be stapled together, or else there is a potential for page-swapping. Lastly, to demonstrate that the testator is competent to sign a will, lawyers often chit-chat about current events with the testator. If testimony is ever needed to prove that the testator is competent, then the witnesses can refer back to that conversation.
If any of the technicalities go wrong, then the will may be invalid. Yes, DIY services provide detailed instructions for drafting your will, but most people don’t follow instructions to a T (or even read the instructions). It’s easy to miss a step and invalidate the whole will.
It’s much easier to get an experienced attorney to supervise the signing. It’s also cheaper than hiring an attorney to draft your entire estate plan.
In many states, the probate court will give the benefit of the doubt if the signing was supervised by a lawyer.
For example, the court is more likely to accept a self-proving affidavit signed by your witnesses, instead of requiring the witnesses to appear in court to testify. Suppose you die 15 years later…tracking down the witnesses, getting them to agree to come to court, and having them accurately recollect your signing ceremony would be very hard. There is no guarantee that they will remember that day or even still be alive.
Without the lawyer supervision and the self-proving affidavit, it may be harder for your executor to probate your estate.
DIY wills often use subpar witnesses. It’s natural to want to ask family and friends to witness, because they are close to you. Using a witness who is named in the will or who could potentially inherit your estate creates a conflict of interest. Their testimony as a witness won’t hold up well in court because they have beneficial interest.
But, it’s also not the best idea to grab a passer-by as a witness (UPS delivery person, doorman, bank teller). If you don’t even know the witness, chances are it will be hard for your heirs to find them if ever needed. Sometimes the address they provide is the physical address where they signed!
For these reasons, lawyers will provide their own experienced witnesses (paralegals, other staff, the lawyer’s spouse, etc.). These people have witnessed wills many times before and can give good testimony if needed.
If you decide to do your own will, at least have the signing supervised by an experienced attorney. For more answers to your estate planning questions, click the link below to receive your free electronic copy of my book, “The Solo Ager Estate Plan.”
Complete this form to receive your complimentary copy of Anthony’s Amazon best-seller, “The Solo Ager Estate Plan”
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A frictionless first estate plan is a great first step for Solo Agers with no plan at all. It helps Solo Agers clarify their thinking and decisions, all while having a basic plan in place in the meantime.
Since we do so many probates, we see what parts of your planning actually helped with probate (dos), and which ones didn’t really matter (don’t bothers).
We are reviewing this info so that you don’t spend too much of your valuable time on planning that won’t help all that much. This is based on our annual executor check in calls, in which we hear from our clients who have well intended plans to gather information for us, should we need it. Which in most cases, we don’t. We are trying to save you stress and make the estate planning process a little bit easier.
Good and proper storage of original documents is important. It’s best to keep the original with your professional executor or other third party. Do not keep it yourself. This is for many reasons, such as access your home or apartment. Additionally, if a third party loses your will, probate could still move forward with a copy. However, if you lose it, it’s presumed that you intentionally destroyed it. Same goes for a safe deposit box – it’s hard to get access to this. It’s not impossible, but it’s very challenging.
Update your emergency contacts and be sure your executor is among those listed. An emergency contact list should be given to someone who will know of your death. This could be a building manager, doorman, neighbor, primary care physician, etc. You want to make sure they know who to notify in the event of your passing, including of importance, your executor and next of kin.
You should also review your beneficiary designations. We have talked before about why we don’t like beneficiary designations, but if you have them, make sure up to date. Or better yet, get rid of them. You certainly want to make sure they represent your wishes, and not your wishes 10 or 20 years ago.
Don’t use treasure maps. We have received detailed letters and emails with where the will is, where their important documents are, and even where their spare keys are. More often than not, the location of these items will change by the time of your passing. It may take us longer to use the treasure map to find them than it would to simply look on our own. Plus, it would be a waste of time searching if they have been moved. It’s not worth the amount of time you’d spend writing this type of “map.”
We don’t need contact lists. Typically, the lists we’ve seen include building managers, financial advisors, etc. These change often. We find when we make these calls, the people on the list no longer even work there.
Speaking of lists, detailed lists of assets which include balances and very specific info is also not needed. High level information is good enough (such as the name of financial institution). Balances change daily, so by the time you write it down, it’s likely changed.
There are a few things we would categorize as sort of helpful, but you don’t need to spend time on these, if you don’t want.
Password lists are one example of a sort of helpful thing to do. A list is nice to have, but post-death access to online accounts is not permitted, even if we have your password and log in. We simply can’t use those passwords. Email and social accounts may have some use to be able to access names and addresses, although again, we have rarely used these. Same with phone passwords. We seldom log into a decedent’s phone, and if we do, it’s only to find a contact name that we couldn’t find elsewhere.
A high level asset list is sort of helpful. It will give us a general sense of what you own to point us in the right direction. We would use this list along with the other items we collect (mail, past tax returns, bank statements, etc.) to be sure we aren’t missing something.
A list of contacts that are likely to not change is also sort of helpful. This includes next of kin, your primary care doctor, and possibly your CPA. It’s good info to know, but likely, we would get the newest information from the documents we have gathered.
If you don’t already have my book, “The Solo Ager Estate Plan,” click the link below for a copy.
Complete this form to receive your complimentary copy of Anthony’s Amazon best-seller, “The Solo Ager Estate Plan”
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It’s understandable that beneficiary designations seem like an excellent and easy estate planning tool. But from our experience, when someone actually dies, beneficiary designations are often bad news.
