These days, more and more young people are delaying – if not totally foregoing – a life that involves marriage and parenting. The lack of jobs, crushing student debt, multiple recessions, and the pandemic have pushed many young people into a life path that leaves little room for settling down with a partner and getting married – and even less room for having children.
Yet, for other young adults, staying single and childless is simply a matter of choice. Regardless, as more young adults opt for non-traditional lifestyles, the number of single childless households is likely to increase in the coming years steadily.
While most adults don’t take estate planning as seriously as they should, if you are single with no children, you might think there’s no need to worry about creating an estate plan. But this is a huge mistake. Having an estate plan can be even more essential if you are single and childless.
If you are single without kids, you face several potential estate planning complications that aren’t an issue for those married with children. And this is true whether you’re wealthy or have minimal assets. Indeed, without proper estate planning, you’re jeopardizing your wealth and assets and putting your life at risk, too. And that’s not even mentioning the potential conflict, mess, and expense you’re leaving for your surviving family and friends to deal with when something unexpected happens to you.
With this in mind, if you’re single and childless, consider these three inconvenient truths before deciding to forego estate planning.
1. Someone Will Have to Handle Your Stuff
Whether you’re rich, poor, or somewhere in between, in the event of your death, everything you own will need to be located, managed, and passed on to someone, which can be a massive undertaking in itself—one that few families are adequately prepared for.
In fact, following a loved one’s death, American families spend an average of 500 hours and $12,700 over the course of 13 months – 20 months if probate is required) to finalize the person’s affairs and settle their estate, according to the first annual Cost of Dying report released this March by tech startup Empathy in partnership with Goldman Sachs. Look for additional articles in the coming weeks covering the Cost Of Dying and the new role Empathy is playing in the end-of-life industry.
On top of the logistical complications involved with finalizing your affairs, without a clear estate plan, including a will or trust, your assets will go through the court process of probate, where a judge and state law will decide who gets everything you own. If no family steps forward, your assets will become the state’s property.
Why give the state everything you worked to build? And even if you have little financial wealth, you undoubtedly own a few sentimental items, maybe even pets, that you’d like to pass to a close friend or favorite charity.
However, it’s rare for someone to die without any family members stepping forward. More likely, some relative you haven’t spoken with in years will come out of the woodwork to stake a claim. Without a will or trust, state intestacy laws establish which family member has the priority inheritance. If you’re unmarried with no children, this hierarchy typically puts parents first, siblings, and more distant relatives like nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, and cousins.
Depending on your family, this could have a potentially troubling – and even deadly outcome. For instance, what if your closest living relative is your estranged brother with serious addiction issues? Or what if your assets are passed on to a niece with poor money-management skills, who is likely to squander her inheritance?
And if your estate does contain significant wealth and assets, this could lead to a costly and contentious court battle, with all of your relatives hiring expensive lawyers to fight over your estate. In the end, this could tear your family apart while making their lawyers rich – all because you didn’t think you needed an estate plan.
As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we will work with you to create an estate plan that ensures that your assets will pass to the proper people while avoiding unnecessary court proceedings and family conflict.
2. Someone Will Have Power Over Your Healthcare
Estate planning isn’t just about passing on your assets when you die. Some of the most critical aspects of estate planning have nothing to do with your money but are aimed at protecting you while you’re still alive.
Proactive planning allows you to name the person you want to make healthcare decisions for you if you are incapacitated and unable to make such decisions yourself. This is done using an estate planning tool known as medical power of attorney.
For example, if you’re incapacitated due to a serious accident or illness and unable to give doctors permission to perform a potentially risky medical treatment, it would be left up to a judge to decide who gets to make that decision on your behalf.
If you have a romantic partner but aren’t married and haven’t granted them medical power of attorney, the court will likely have a family member, not your partner, make those decisions. Depending on your family, that person may make decisions contrary to what you or your partner would want.
And if you don’t want your estranged brother to inherit your assets, you probably don’t want him to have the power to make life-and-death decisions about your medical care, either. But that’s exactly what could happen if you don’t put a plan in place.
Furthermore, your family members who have priority in making decisions for you could keep your dearest friends away from your bedside in the event of your hospitalization. Or family members who don’t share your values about the type of food you eat, or the types of medical care you receive, could be the one’s making decisions about how you’ll be cared for.
To address these issues, you need to implement an estate planning tool that provides specific guidelines detailing how you want your medical care to be managed during your incapacity, including critical end-of-life decisions. This is done using an estate planning vehicle known as a living will.
Bottom line: If you are single with no kids, you need to create an estate plan in order to name healthcare decision-makers for yourself and provide instructions on how you want those decisions made should you ever become incapacitated and unable to make those decisions yourself.
3. Someone Will Get Power Over Your Finances
As with healthcare decisions, if you become incapacitated and haven’t legally named someone to handle your finances while you’re unable to do so, the court will pick someone for you. The way to avoid this is by granting someone you trust durable financial power of attorney.
A durable financial power of attorney is an estate planning vehicle that gives the person you choose the immediate authority to manage your financial, legal, and business affairs if you’re incapacitated. This agent will have a broad range of powers to handle things like paying your bills and taxes, running your business, collecting your Social Security benefits, selling your home, and managing your banking and investment accounts.
Without a signed durable financial power of attorney, your family and friends will have to go to court to get access to your finances, which not only takes time but could lead to the mismanagement – and even the loss – of your assets should the court grant this authority to the wrong person.
What’s more, the person you name doesn’t have to be a lawyer or financial professional; it can be anybody you choose, including family and friends. The most important aspect of your choice is selecting someone imminently trustworthy since they will have nearly complete control over your finances while you remain incapacitated. And besides, with us as your Personal Family Lawyer®, your agent will have access to our team as their trusted counsel should they need guidance or help.
Don’t Leave So Much At Risk
Given these potential risks and costs for yourself and those you care about, it would be foolhardy if you were single without kids to ignore or put off these basic estate planning strategies. Identifying the right estate planning tools is easy, and it begins with a Family Wealth Planning Session. During this session, your attorney will consider everything you own and everyone you love, and guide you to make informed, educated, and empowered choices for yourself and your loved ones.
In the end, it will likely take just a few hours of your time to make sure that your assets, healthcare, and finances will be managed most effectively and affordably possible in the event of your death or incapacity.
At Cheever Law, APC, we don’t just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death for yourself and the people you love, starting with a valuable and educational Family Wealth Planning Session. The Life & Legacy Planning Session will allow you to get more financially organized and make all the best choices for the people you love. If you have already completed your estate plan, we will review that plan at your Life & Legacy Planning Session (aka Family Wealth Planning Session) to ensure that it will work the way you intend and address any holes or gaps that may be present if circumstances have changed since you executed your plan.
To learn more about our one-of-a-kind systems and services, contact us or schedule a 15-minute introductory call today.