Someday you are going to die. What if that day comes sooner than you expect? What if it happens tomorrow?
Here are the slacker mom’s steps to “getting your affairs in order.”
1. Realize you need it
It doesn’t matter if you don’t think you have an “estate.” You need life insurance if you are responsible for anything or anybody. At the very least, someone is going to have to pay for your funeral and the disposal or preservation of your remains. Don’t hurt the people you love by leaving them with no money to pay for it. Or make sure the people you love are rich.
If you have a partner, spouse, and/or children, someone is going to have to take care of them if you die. Leave enough money for them to do that. At the very least, get a life insurance policy. They are not expensive, especially if you are a non-smoker.
Also? Quit smoking. What the hell is wrong with you?
1a. Get over yourself
Step 1a is to realize your own mortality and obsess about this realization for a few years, even ending up in therapy because you cannot stop imagining your own grisly death, and writing letters to your dead friends about how angry you are. After all that, you must read books about the various ways you can suddenly die and leave your babies without a mother and how if you are not prepared they will end up being raised by your crazy in-laws (if you have those, which I do not, of course) and grow up to be unhappy drug addicts.
And so then you must google “estate planning” and “will” and you will discover that in your own state there are lots of rules about what you have to do to make the process as painless as possible for your surviving spouse and your children. All of this googling will rekindle your extreme fear of death and of your babies growing up without a mother, and this fear will paralyze you for a while, until you flip through the channels one night and Suze Orman tells you about her free will and trust planning kit and you will think “that’s easy!” and you think tomorrow you will just get off your butt and get started.
2. Investigate
Now you are ready to poke around among actual resources. This is the time when you will schedule an informational session with an estate planning lawyer, and you will amass a pile of paperwork to help you decide how much your estate (haha, “like we have an estate,” you will think as you clip coupons to save 55 cents on peanut butter) is worth, and you will make your husband take the morning off of work, and you will sit with him through the lawyer’s emotional presentation in which he tells you how his wife died suddenly, leaving him with two little girls to raise on his own, which is why he is so passionate about helping families prepare for the worst, and why he includes a custom kit for you to record precious memories and life’s little instruction package according to you for your children to watch or listen to after you die. And you will weep through the entire meeting until he gets to the part where he says the whole process will cost $5,000 and you realize what a big mistake this was because you just searched through the couch cushions to scrounge up enough crumpled dollar bills to cover the parking fee at the lawyer’s fancy office building. And your husband will scoff at the fee and be annoyed that he skipped an important work meeting for this?
3. Procrastinate
Then you must go home and lick your wounds and put the giant pile of paperwork away for a very long time.
4. Figure out what you need
Instead of saving money to pay $5,000 to a lawyer, you now turn again to Suze Orman and google and Estate Planning For Dummies, because it’s all just paperwork, isn’t it? But it’s complicated and you’re not sure exactly what you need so you stay up late for many days surfing the internet and cross-referencing. And you finally figure out that you need to start with a trust. Baby steps.
[A trust – in my limited understanding – is a legal entity that owns things just like a person does, and it really only exists in the imaginations of lawyers. But it’s the law. If you own your house and you die, the house goes into “probate” which means the technical ownership of the house is in question until the court signs the necessary documents to grant the ownership to the next of kin or whomever you designate as the beneficiary in your will, IF YOU HAVE A WILL, which you do not. But if the trust owns your house and then you die, the trust still owns your house, but there are special instructions in the trust that say who gets the house after you die, and since you paid the lawyers to make the trust, they don’t come after you in probate to make your family pay more after you die.]
5. Make a list
So you will print out the trust form and think “look what I did all by myself!” and then you will see that you have to have the trust notarized, which means another morning that your husband will have to take off work, and so you will wait another few months with the list item “Get trust notarized” growing moldy on your to-do list.
Stay tuned for Adventures in Estate Planning: How To Offend Many Actual Lawyers!
Kim – you freaking rock! LOVE this so much. Your wit is fantastic and this information is so important. (And damn I NEED to do this girl!) Who knew a blog about estate planning could be useful and laugh-out-loud funny!
I love this piece and I love that picture. Someone to bring you beer after you die? That’s darn thoughtful.
I have totally been there, done that. In fact, we just finished updating our whole plan and we have yet to sign off on it and get it notarized so it is currently, ahem, “growing moldy on our ‘to-do’ list.” You’ve given me the kick in the butt I need.
I need to do this now, like this week. You’ve made me imagine being paralyzed with fear over my son growing up without a mother, so I think I should get on this while I’m 38-weeks pregnant and haven’t quite become a basket case filled with mommy hormones and love and worry. I think it will be much harder to be rational about wills and estate after his makes his appearance.
We’ve done most of this, but thanks for the kick to finish up. The bit about the trust is something I still need to look into.
Thanks Kim! (And thanks for including procrastination on the list…)
We’ve done it all when it comes to estate planning. Very stressful and expensive, but worth it I think (hope). And, yes, we did procrastinate!
I have been wallowing in this step “3. Procrastinate
Then you must go home and lick your wounds and put the giant pile of paperwork away for a very long time.” until the other night!
I MADE my husband go with me to meet with a financial planner so that we could both act like responsible adults with children… so I get to go to the next step now… will keep you posted!
Estate planning, what’s that again? I’ve been asking my hustband to set up college funds for the kids for like, 5 years. OK, our oldest is only 4 so I guess it hasn’t been longer than 4 years. He promises me he’ll have it done by the end of the week but I’ve heard that before. Maybe once that is done, we’ll move on to the “Estate.”
Thanks for this. I had a good laugh.
Yea great post so important! We just sent stuff to the lawyers about a will. You never know
All good stuff to ponder and ponder sooner than later. If like me you have no estate and no assets but you want to make your kid goes to the right people when you’re gone, try legalzoom.com. It’s simple and straightforward and gets the job done quickly. And it’s cheap.
You present essential information in a way we can all relate to. (I’m a linguist so I get to end a sentence in a preposition whenever I want.) Including “procrastinate” as one of the steps means you know we’re human beings, not legal entities.
This is an great post, but totally uncomfortable at the same time!
Thanks for the reminder.
Our kids are too important to neglect this.
This is a very important post…one that isn’t thought of….I love your tips and while yes, I don’t want to think about it, I must….it’s the responsible thing to do.
Took the first step. A phone call to the estate planner. Baby steps . . .
This is such a helpful article. Thank you so much for sharing!
I so need to start doing this.
YES! We keep putting it off because it is so expensive to do with a lawyer. We can’t really afford it…What I really want to know is can we really do it ourselves and have it be legit? I guess I’ll have to keep reading to find out!
this is soooo important and you make it less painful!!
That’s why wise people always tell us to be ready for death always. You never know when it is going to come. 🙁
This is the perfect site for anybody who wants to understand this topic.
You understand so much its almost tough to argue with you (not that I really will need to…HaHa).
You definitely put a fresh spin on a topic that’s been discussed for years.
Wonderful stuff, just wonderful!
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This is exactly what I needed to hear! I agree that it is really important to plan your estate while you can! It’s true that you never know what could happen, and that it is better to take some time to plan for the unexpected. In fact, I think I’ll be following this guide this next week- hopefully I am able to get past step 3!
I love the first step you talked about here with realizing that death is a reality and that you need to make sure things are taken care of before you go. I, myself, don’t have much of an estate, but I do have people that are dependent on me, and what you said really woke me up to making sure they are alright once I am gone. It really is a selfish thing to not plan for anything after your death because you could leave your family in a financial crisis that they are not ready to handle. I guess that’s why it’s so much better to plan your estate as soon as possible — no one knows when their time will come.
Hey @Kim,
Nice post Buddy!!!
Wills and estate planning may sound simple, but they can also be very complicated. So while planning the family estate, be sure to follow these steps for success.Its perfect article for anyone who wants to know about the estate planning. It hardly matters if you don’t think you have an “estate”. Estate planning can be performed by anyone.
Thanks for sharing this post and Keep Sharing
I love this post.
Here I would like to suggest that before start estate planning you should create a list of all of your assets and liabilities so that estate attorney can determine your net worth and potential tax liability.
Thanks and Keep sharing such posts.