Get It in Writing

Let’s pretend you are a world-renowned chef. You recently perfected an amazing dish that you’ve been working on for years, adding and subtracting ingredients until it was just right. It’s your life’s work.

People are going mad over the dish. They can’t get enough of it.

The sales of your restaurant are skyrocketing due to customer demand. All you need to do is keep making the dish and money will roll in.

No one else in the world, however, knows how to make the dish. Only you do. So if you die, your secret recipe, which is worth millions, dies with you.

If that were the case, would you take a couple of minutes, maybe hours, to write out the recipe? What if you had children and they could make money from your dish over their lifetimes? Would it be even more important to reduce your recipe to writing?

The answer is obvious.

Now consider this: Your estate plan is your recipe. You would be crazy not to have it in writing.

And yet, from more than 10 years of experience in working as a financial planner, I can tell you that having an estate plan in place is one of the most disregarded pieces of financial advice on this planet. An alarmingly high number of people don’t have a will or a trust in place.

I get it.

It’s not fun to think about your death, and the odds are you won’t die young. So what’s the fuss?

Well, whether you know it or not, you actually do have an estate plan. Because if you have not specifically made out your own, the government has laws in place to divvy up your assets on your behalf. The government will also decide who should care for your minor children. The problem is you may not like the government’s plan.

That’s why it’s vital to have your own. In writing.

Here are two incredibly important things to understand about estate planning. (1) An inexpensive will is sufficient for the vast majority of people. (2) It doesn’t have to take more than a couple of hours of your time to draft a will – and nearly any attorney can help.

If you don’t have an estate plan in place right now, I urge you to make it a priority over the next month.

With that said, please allow me to tell two quick estate planning stories.

Cecil Harris was a farmer in the 1940s. One day he was in the field, working his land, when his tractor overturned and trapped him under it. He struggled to free himself but couldn’t. He was losing blood at a rapid rate. Cecil didn’t have a will in place, and he wanted to make sure his wife was taken care of.

So Cecil wiggled his pocket knife from his pants. And on the fender of his tractor, he scratched out his will. He wrote, “In case I die in this mess I leave all to the wife.” Then he signed his name, Cecil Geo Harris.

By the time Cecil was discovered, he had been trapped for 10 hours. He made it to the hospital but died the following day. The fender of the tractor was actually removed from the tractor and presented in court. The court found that Cecil had created a valid will, and his wife received his full estate.

Story number two. Aretha Franklin, the talented singer, died with seemingly two wills in place. She had four sons and an estate worth millions of dollars, including real estate, furs, gowns, jewelry, and future song royalties. The first will was dated in 2010 and was signed and notarized. The second will was dated in 2014 but was not notarized. The differences between the two wills gave more assets to certain sons.

As you can imagine, an expensive and drawn-out legal battle ensued that left the estate far smaller than it otherwise would have been.

Cecil Harris waited too long. Aretha Franklin wasn’t clear. We can all learn a lot from each of them.

If you don’t have a will or trust in place, get it done. And if you have multiple versions, make sure it is crystal clear which version supersedes the others.