Estate Planning: Have You Prepared the People?
Four approaches to planning for life, aging and death.
We cannot choose whether we age or die. We can choose how we prepare—and what we leave others to figure out.
Does being prepared mean having a Will? Choosing someone to make decisions if we cannot? Organizing our finances? Or does it ask something more of us?
Our health may change, and we may eventually depend on other people in ways we never have before. When we die, others will be left to manage our affairs and carry on without us. Estate planning gives us a chance to think about what we want and help the people who may one day support us understand our wishes.
It also raises a personal question: What responsibility do we believe we have to the people who may one day support us or carry out our wishes?
There are different ways to respond. The following four approaches can overlap, but each places its emphasis somewhere different.
1. Choosing not to plan
Planning can be uncomfortable, and there is usually something more immediate competing for our attention. You may decide to leave it for another day, trust that your family will work things out or feel that there is little to prepare.
If illness, incapacity or death arrives first, however, someone else will have to work with whatever information and legal authority are available. They may be willing to help but uncertain about what you want or where to begin.
Choosing not to plan is still a choice. It is worth understanding how much of the preparation—and uncertainty—you are leaving to others.
2. Preparing a Will and Powers of Attorney
For many people, planning means having Wills and Powers of Attorney prepared, signed and stored.
These documents provide an important legal foundation. For estate planning in Ontario, a Will appoints an executor to settle your estate and identifies the beneficiaries who will receive what remains once that work is complete.
A Continuing Power of Attorney for Property appoints someone to manage financial affairs under the authority you give them, including if you become mentally incapable of managing your property. A Power of Attorney for Personal Care appoints someone to make personal care decisions you can no longer make.
The difficulty comes when completing the documents is taken to mean that everything is settled. Naming someone to act does not necessarily mean they understand the responsibility, know where to find important information or have spoken with you about your wishes.
The legal work may be complete, but you may not yet have taken the time to understand your own wishes and preferences, let alone communicate them to the people who may one day act for you.
3. Building a legal and financial estate plan
More extensive legal and financial planning considers how assets are owned, managed and transferred. Businesses, trusts, complex family circumstances and tax obligations may require advice from several professionals.
This work can be valuable and necessary. But it can focus on the property being transferred, with less attention to the people involved.
A carefully structured inheritance, for example, may still leave family members with unanswered questions about your intentions. The arrangements may be sound, but the expectations around them may never have been discussed.
Understanding the financial consequences is important. So is considering what those arrangements will mean in the lives of the people affected.
4. Taking a Conscious Estate Planning approach
At Brown Lawyers, Conscious Estate Planning connects legal and financial preparation with your values, relationships and experience of life.
It asks what matters to you, how you hope to live as circumstances change and what guidance you want to give the people who may need to help you. It means helping your chosen decision-makers understand both the responsibilities they may take on and the wishes and values that should guide them.
Someone may know you want to stay at home as you age, but do they understand why? Perhaps it is your independence, your neighbours or familiar routines. Understanding those priorities can help them consider the choices if your needs change.
This approach also considers what you want to pass on beyond property: the lessons, values and understanding that form part of your legacy. Preparing people involves sharing those things, organizing useful information and returning to the conversation as life changes.
If you are unsure where to begin, our Coda Prompts offer questions to help you explore what matters most to you and the values you want to guide your life and planning.
Have you prepared the people?
You may need elements of several approaches. The question is whether your preparation addresses both your circumstances and the people involved.
“Have I taken responsibility for what may happen, and have I prepared the people who may one day need to help me?”
Start by speaking with someone you would want to act for you. Have they agreed? Do they understand your wishes? What would they need to know?
Planning begins when we take those questions seriously and decide what we are willing to do about them.
Working on What’s Next
If you would like a place to explore these questions, join a Working on What’s Next estate planning workshop at Brown Lawyers in Waterdown.
We are now booking November workshops. Email michelle@brownlawyerspc.com or call 905-528-6346 to ask about available dates and reserve your place.
If you’d prefer to begin with a personal conversation, get in touch. We can talk through what matters to you and how your Will and Powers of Attorney can support the preparation you want to make.
