Estate Planning Slowdown: Is money a tool or is it love?

Sometimes people struggle to move forward with estate planning because they hit a wall. It’s hard for them to describe or name, but it’s something they just can’t quite get past. Sometimes talking with an experienced estate planning attorney that’s had this conversation hundreds of times with hundreds of people can help move folks through it.

A husband and wife come in for a consult. They’ve been meaning to do estate planning since they had children and their youngest child is now 24 years old. For some reason, they just haven’t gotten around to it. As we begin to chat about what their goals are, the husband mentions to me that their daughter is a social worker and their son is a CPA. As we get deeper into the conversation the husband says that he’s not worried about his son, that he knows he’ll be financially successful, but that his daughter…maybe their documents should split the assets 60/40 instead of 50/50. The wife’s body language immediately gets stiff. She glances at her husband and then quickly away. I ask her what her thoughts are and after a moment’s hesitation she tells me that she had always thought things would go 50/50.

Let’s pause things here.

There is no right or wrong way to do estate planning. Documents can be drafted so that inheritance passes equally to children, or percentages can be adjusted. You might even choose some conditional language such as, “$500,000 or 50% of my remaining assets, whichever is greater, to my daughter,.” Well drafted estate planning documents can accomplish exactly what you want; the trouble, sometimes, can be understanding and deciding exactly what you want.

As I continue my conversation with the husband and wife I share with them that what I think I’m hearing is that they are viewing the assets they are leaving to their children in two different ways: the husband is viewing the money as a tool and their daughter will need more of the tool, while the wife is viewing the money as an expression of love and they love their children equally. No one is wrong, it’s just two different ways of seeing things. As we began to talk through more of the husband and wife’s concerns a solution presented itself and they were able to move forward with their planning, we just needed to have that slight shift of perspective to do it.