I'll Be Dead Anyway

A friend said three things to me recently that I’ve heard more times than I can count. “I’ll be dead, so it won’t be my problem.” “I know my kids, they won’t fight.” “If my spouse wants to deal with it after I'm gone, that’s up to her.”He has a will. He has five kids. He feels like he’s handled it. But his will passes everything to his spouse with no direction about personal property and no conversation on record about who gets what.In this episode, I go through all three of those statements, because each one sounds like a reasonable position and each one is actually a planning gap dressed up as indifference.The research is striking. More than half of estate disputes involve items worth less than ten percent of the total estate. Not the money. The stuff. And families that look just fine while a parent is alive can find themselves in conflict they never saw coming once that person is gone.This one is for anyone who has said these things, or loves someone who has.Read the full article.