Houser Firm

2 out of 3 Americans haven’t done their estate planning yet

On Behalf of | Jul 7, 2022 | Estate Planning

Eventually, there will come a day when everyone has to pass their assets on to their heirs. The value of assets held by each individual can be dramatically different, but everyone has something that needs to be passed on.

Additionally, estate planning can be used to address a lot of things that may not include assets. Parents can set up a guardianship for their children. Older adults can use powers of attorney to make sure that they have the right agent chosen to make their medical or financial decisions on their behalf. Estate planning is complex, and there are a lot of tools that anyone can use.

Despite this, studies have found that roughly two out of three people in the United States don’t have an estate plan. Why not?

They’re going to do it later

People did cite a lot of different reasons, such as thinking that it would be too expensive, not knowing where to begin or not thinking that they had enough assets for an estate plan to make sense. But the single biggest reason was that they simply hadn’t gotten around to doing their estate planning yet, and they were planning on doing it later.

Essentially, most people know that they need to get an estate plan in place, but procrastination keeps them from doing it at this time. It’s not that they never expect to have one, but just that they think they can make it in the future.

If you’re not interested in taking a risk and putting off your estate plan, then it may be time to begin looking into the steps you can take to make that plan today.