Creating an estate plan is an important step to take for your family. It gives you many benefits and options, and you get a chance to think about what you want to happen with your assets. It also helps you to avoid a lot of potential problems. Today, let’s look at some of the negative drawbacks of parents passing away with no plan in place.
Children have to locate assets
First and foremost, you put all of the pressure on your children to find your assets. Do they know how much money you had in the bank or where you did your investing? They have to uncover everything. It’s not as easy as just going through the house, especially with digital assets and online accounts. They won’t have passwords, usernames and email addresses, so it all gets complex.
Some assets may be difficult to get
It’s not always easy to get someone else’s assets, even when that person has died. For instance, say you did actually write a will, and it says that your child gets your safety deposit box. Unfortunately, the will is in the safety deposit box. How do they a) discover the existence of the will and b) actually get the will out of the box?
Children have to make all the decisions
Neglecting to plan also means that you give up your right to plan. Your children have to make all of the decisions for you. Are they going to do this in a way that you approve of? If you care at all about where your assets go, don’t assume they’ll make the same choices or even know what you want.
Disputes are more likely
Furthermore, forcing the children to make the decisions means they may not agree with one another regarding what you wanted or what should be done. This can lead to some long disputes about who should get how much money, what should be done with the house and how to divide family heirlooms.
To avoid all of these problems, just consider doing your estate planning in advance.
