Estate
Talking to Aging Parents About Estate Planning
Beyond the practical purpose of transferring assets and reducing taxes, an estate plan reflects love, responsibility, and values.
July 10, 2026
Beyond the practical purpose of transferring assets and reducing taxes, an estate plan reflects love, responsibility, and values.
While your estate plan may describe in detail who will receive big-ticket items, your loved ones may argue over small nostalgic items that you unintentionally omitted. To prevent family strife and forestall bickering among your loved ones, you also need to think in a big-picture way about the little things in your estate.
After notifying loved ones of your impending surgery, your first call to a professional should be to your estate planning attorney. Time is of the essence, and your attorney can quickly triage the documents that provide the most immediate protection for you and your family.
You have decided to meet with an estate planning attorney to get your affairs in order and ensure that your loved ones are protected. Now that you have scheduled the appointment, it is time to get yourself organized and prepare for the first meeting.
Since creating your estate plan, have you thought about updating it? If you are like most people, probably not.
From unrecorded deeds to accounts held solely in a deceased spouse’s name, many people discover too late that what they thought they owned is not legally theirs. When that happens, the fallout can be costly, time-consuming, and deeply disruptive.
Creating a trust to hold accounts and property can avoid the long, complicated probate process.
When thinking through their estate plan and how they want their assets managed after they pass away, most parents wish to treat their children equally, often out of a sense of fairness. However, sometimes being fair or doing what is right by your children may mean giving unequal inheritances.
Estate planning attorneys are often asked where original estate planning documents—wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives—should be stored for safekeeping. There is no right or wrong answer to this question.
If the last time you and your spouse updated your estate plan was more than a decade ago, your estate plan may contain what is sometimes referred to as AB