Everyone will eventually need an estate plan, but not everyone has one. Studies have found that roughly one-third of Americans have made an estate plan. But that leaves the majority of them with no plan in place.
You may find yourself surprised to learn that people are skipping such an important step. Most people do not have a will and have not made any plans for how their assets will pass to the next generation. Why is it that people are so hesitant to make an estate plan?
They are going to do it in the future
Often, it is not that people are opposed to making an estate plan; it is just that they think they need to do it in the future. Someone in their 20s may not make a plan because they assume they do not need to make it until they are in their 60s. Many people are just waiting until they get closer to the end of their lives, so they are procrastinating.
There are some other reasons. For instance, one study claimed that 12% of respondents were unsure of how to start the legal process of making an estate plan, 13% of respondents thought that it would be too expensive to do so and another 33% of respondents did not believe they owned enough assets for an estate plan to make sense.
None of these is a good reason to procrastinate estate planning. It can be helpful at any age, at any asset level, and often the key is just to understand the first legal steps to take to begin getting that plan in place. If you are interested in doing so, it can be helpful to work with an experienced law firm at this time.