No, It’s Not About the Money (But Really, It Is About the Money)

The following is adapted from Savvy Estate Planning by James L. Cunningham, Jr.

Are you sitting down?

I’m afraid I have some rather shocking news for you.

Take a deep breath. Ready? Here goes: when you die, your stuff is not going with you.

None of it.

Not your house. Not your car. Not your bank accounts. Not your 401(k). Not your cabin by the lake. Not your boat on the lake. Not the artwork on your walls. Not your kids’ memorabilia you keep in boxes. Not your fishing rods. And not your Italian bicycle.

Probably not even your signed Babe Ruth baseball.

I’m serious. Lots of people over the millennia have tried to take stuff with them. Vikings piled stuff on funeral boats and set them on fire. Pharaohs stacked stuff in pyramids. As far as we know, these efforts didn’t work out.

But here’s the thing: all your stuff will not just disappear, either. Your stuff will go to someone, somewhere, somehow.

Someone Else May Decide Your Legacy

You may not have made a plan for where it will go, but someone will have a plan — guaranteed. The state you live in will step forward with its specific laws. An ex-spouse will step in with a lawyer.

Even more important than what happens to your stuff is what happens to your minor children and/or dependents who are disabled. If you don’t decide who will assume responsibility for them in the event of your death, someone else will.

Someone other than you will stand up in a courtroom, and a judge whom you don’t know will determine if and how your assets will help the next generation.

A set of laws you have likely never read will decide whether your surviving loved ones end up fighting in that courtroom over everything from custody of your children and dependents, to control of your bank accounts and possession of your Italian bicycle.

No Plan? Maybe You’ll Get Lucky

Now it’s possible that everything will go just fine without you making a plan. It may be that your state’s laws and processes just happen to align with your wishes and the exact configuration of your family at the time you pass on.

But believe me: as a living trust and estate planning attorney with a big practice, I deal with this every day. Without a plan, everything rarely goes “just fine.”

The odds are high that a lengthy legal process will ensue and damage your surviving family members’ relationships. The odds are very high.

Time and again surviving children tell me that the last memory, sometimes the lasting memory, they have of their parent is “all that crap we had to go through when Dad died.”

There is Good News

Sounds dire, right? And it is. But there is good news, too. You see, unlike our ancestors over the millennia, and unlike people in less-free countries — that is, most countries — Americans can exercise amazing control over what happens when they die or become incapacitated.

In this great nation of ours, you will find surprising respect for the wishes of the deceased and incapacitated — as long as those wishes are recorded on the right documents, follow the local laws, assets are properly structured, and responsible people follow through on the plan.

We have a process to make this work that’s complex and imperfect, but probably better than any similar process in history. The process works as long as you have an estate plan.

If you have a plan, you really can make things come out for the best — or at least, as nearly as possible to the way you would have wanted. Life is like that, and so, I’m telling you, is death.

Make Sure You Have an Estate Plan

Trouble is, lots of Americans don’t want to hear the shocking news I just asked you to read. At some level, they just don’t believe it’s true. And as a result, they don’t exercise their rights and freedoms.

They don’t make any plan of consequence. Indeed, 55 percent die without even a will. Then, when the truly inevitable happens, their lack of planning often causes genuine catastrophes in their families.

You don’t have to be like them, though. Remember that good news: if you avoid the usual big blunders that most Americans make in planning the succession of their estates, you will not just leave your assets to whom you want in the way you want to, but you will leave a legacy.

The time of your passing or incapacity will be guided by common sense, fairness, logic, and your best intentions — instead of chaos, strife, and uncertainty. And you will know that you have been a genuine help to your loved ones as they move forward with their lives.

For more advice on how to create your estate plan, you can find Savvy Estate Planning on Amazon.

James L. Cunningham, Jr. has been an attorney for more than two decades in the areas of estate planning, probate, trust administration, elder law, disability/special needs planning, and much more. He is one of the few attorneys certified by the State Bar of California as a Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust, and Probate Law. As founder of CunninghamLegal, he oversees six offices, along with a team of attorneys and professionals focused entirely on estate issues. James is a California native, a devoted husband, and the father of three children. You can learn more about his work at www.cunninghamlegal.com.