I've sat across the desk from a lot of people who've been meaning to get their estate plan done for years. Smart, responsible people — the kind who have insurance, change the smoke detector batteries, and keep their oil changed on schedule. And yet the estate plan never quite happens.
So in the spirit of fairness, let me lay out the three best reasons to keep putting it off. Then, since I'm a lawyer and can't help myself, I'll explain why each one falls apart.
Reason 1: "I'm not old enough to worry about it yet."
This is the most popular excuse, and it has a comforting logic to it. Estate planning is for old people. You're not old. Therefore, later.
The problem is that estate planning isn't really about age — it's about the unexpected. Incapacity and death don't check your birth certificate first. A car accident, a sudden illness, a bad fall: these don't wait for retirement. And some of the most important pieces of a plan matter more when you're younger, not less.
If you have minor children, your will is where you name the guardian who'd raise them if something happened to you and the other parent. If you don't name one, a judge decides — possibly choosing differently than you would have. If you have a power of attorney in place, your spouse or parent can step in to manage your affairs after an accident without going to court. The twenty-five-year-old with a new baby arguably needs a plan more urgently than the comfortable seventy-year-old who's had one for decades. "I'm too young" is exactly backwards.
Reason 2: "I don't have enough to need a plan."
Close behind is the belief that estate planning is for the wealthy — that unless you've got a fortune to shelter from taxes, there's nothing to plan.
But an estate plan isn't primarily a tax document. For most Illinois families, taxes aren't even the issue — Illinois doesn't impose its estate tax until an estate exceeds $4,000,000, and the federal exemption is higher still. What a plan actually does for ordinary people is decide who gets your things, who's in charge of handling it, and who can make decisions for you if you can't make them yourself.
Everybody has something — a house, a car, a bank account, a retirement plan, a few possessions with real meaning to the family. If you die without a plan in Illinois, the state's intestacy law decides who inherits, on its terms, not yours. Your estate goes through probate, a public court process that costs time and money. "I don't have much" doesn't mean there's nothing to plan; it means there's less of a cushion to absorb the cost and delay of having no plan.
Reason 3: "It's morbid, and I'd rather not think about it."
This one I actually sympathize with. Nobody enjoys contemplating their own death or imagining a stroke that takes away their independence. It's far more pleasant to think about almost anything else.
But here's what I've watched over the years: the people who avoid the topic don't make it go away — they just hand the burden to their families. The avoidance doesn't spare anyone the hard reality. It only guarantees that your loved ones face that reality with no instructions, no authority, and no idea what you would have wanted, all while they're grieving.
The clients who actually sit down and do this almost always tell me afterward that they feel better, not worse. The dread was in the avoiding. Once it's done, there's relief — the quiet confidence of knowing your family is protected and the decisions are made. Thinking about it for an afternoon is the price of not having to worry about it ever again.
So when should you actually do it?
If you've read this far, you already know where I'm headed. The three best reasons to delay — too young, too little, too unpleasant — are the same three reasons it's worth doing now. Plans are for the unexpected, ordinary families need them as much as wealthy ones, and the discomfort of an afternoon's planning is nothing next to the mess of leaving none behind.
It doesn't have to be overwhelming. A solid foundation is usually just a few documents, and getting started is far easier than the years of meaning-to-get-around-to-it that came before. When you're ready to stop putting it off, take a look at how we handle estate planning and let's get it done.