3 reasons to discuss your estate plan

If you are making your estate plan, you may be wondering if you should talk to others about it or keep things to yourself.

Here are a few reasons why talking to select individuals about it may be useful

1. To reassure your loved ones

When you die, or fall seriously ill, those close to you may be in a bit of a flap. They won’t be in the best position to make good decisions. Nor do you want to burden them with a huge amount of work and worry about searching for documents or wondering what your wishes are.

You can use the estate plan to clarify your wishes, and you can talk to people about some of the things it may contain to ease things for them when the time comes. For example, you could tell your sister that if you die before them, they can look in the filing cabinet in the hallway, top drawer, to find all your estate planning documents and a list of contacts to give to Jerry, who you have named as executor.

2. To reduce the chance of disputes

Maybe you made some controversial decisions in your estate plan. Telling those they affect in advance, and explaining why you made those decisions, can reduce the chance they try to challenge them once you are gone. 

3. To increase its effectiveness

Finally, discussing your estate plan with someone with appropriate legal knowledge is always advisable. While it is possible to download a template from the internet and do much of it yourself, you will be flying blind to some extent. Those templates are generic and you could be overlooking options that suit you better. You could also make beginner’s mistakes that are not discovered until after your death when it is too late to do anything about it. 

With appropriate guidance, you increase the chance your estate plan is effective and valid.