Home for the Holidays: Talking With Your Family About Your Estate Plan

Question:     How do I talk to my family about my estate plan?  We’ll all be together this year for the holidays and I thought now would be a good time.

Answer:    Talking to your family and beneficiaries may be one of the most important parts of managing your estate before you die.  Whether to let them know about the content of your will and the distribution plan for your assets is up to you.  Open communication may help allay anxieties and allow for an honest conversation.   If you are comfortable with full disclosure, some clients allow their children or close family members to read their will or even hand out copies for them to keep.   You may want to keep the extent of your estate private, but simply let them know that you’ve taken the steps to plan for this inevitability.  It is helpful to let your family know who your estate planning attorney is so they know where to find your documents.  We recommend you review your existing estate plan whenever there is a major change in your life, such as illness, death of a family member, major financial changes and disability of a family member.  But the conversation can be emotionally charged and it is understandable that some people because of family dynamics would prefer to avoid it during their lifetime.  The New York Times published an article earlier this year about how to broach the topic of estate plans with a parent, which can be found by clicking here.