A Will is Not Enough

Every year, November marks Make a Will Month. In case you weren’t sure, we’re big fans of Last Wills & Testaments over here: we’re constantly shouting from the rooftops about how every single person should have a Will, and we’ve written blog post after blog post about why you should write (or update) your Will right now.

We continue to stand by all of that. But this Make a Will Month, we want to take a slightly different tack and talk about why having a Will is not enough. Because even though your Last Will & Testament is, without question, one of the most important documents you’ll ever have to your name, it’s also just one piece of the Aging & End of Life Planning Process. There’s a lot more to think about than what will happen to your Estate after you’re gone. 

Yes, Your Will is Still Important

Before we get into it, in the spirit of Make a Will Month, we want to stress: you should still have a customized, up-to-date Last Will & Testament. No matter how old you are, no matter how much money you have, every legal adult needs to have a Will. 

This single document will ensure that if anything ever happens to you, your Estate will be taken care of. Obviously, this includes money, property, and other assets. But it can also include parts of your life that you may not typically consider to be “assets”—like your pets, for example. 

Your Last Will & Testament gives you the ability to ensure that your loved ones (including your furry friends) are well taken care of after you’re gone. It also spares them all the unnecessary stress, heartache, and conflict that comes with trying to divide up a deceased loved one’s Estate. For those of us with more complex family situations—like blended families, for instance—it’s crucially important to think ahead about potential points of conflict and proactively address them in your Will. 

If you don’t have an up-to-date Will, fear not: creating your Will is easier than ever. In general, we always recommend sitting down with a legal professional to talk through your and your family’s unique needs. But if the idea of sitting down with a lawyer sounds too overwhelming, there are amazing online services like Epilogue that will let you create legally binding Wills in well under an hour. Easy peasy! 

Beyond Your Will 

Here’s the problem: when most people think of Aging & End of Life Planning, they think that drafting their Will is pretty much the whole enchilada. At most, they’ll also think about working with a financial advisor and maybe an accountant. 

But that couldn’t be further from the truth! Aging & End of Life Planning involves so much more. Take a look at the pie chart we’ve put together below: 

From where we’re standing, having a Last Will & Testament is only about 10% of the Aging & End of Life Planning pie. You’ve also got to make sure you’re making advanced decisions and arrangements for your health and medical decisions; thinking about the environment in which you want to age; thinking through worst-case scenarios; appointing Powers of Attorney; and more. 

Below, we go over just three of the most important pie slices that often get overlooked. 

1. Planning Your Aging Process

When we talk about “Aging & End of Life,” people’s attention tends to go mostly to the “End of Life” part: planning for what’s going to happen to your Estate, what you want to happen to your body after your death, what kind of arrangements should be made for the funeral, and so on. 

But if you’re lucky enough to live for a nice, long time, then you won’t get to the “End of Life” part without going through a whole lot more of the “Aging” part. And believe us when we tell you: getting old is something you need to plan for in advance. It comes with a lot of physical, mental, and social changes that will have a major impact on the way you live your life—changes that you should honestly be thinking about by the time you’re in your forties or fifties, if you’re going to adequately plan for them. 

We know that may sound extreme. But consider this: hiring a PSW to care for an aging person is more expensive than it is to put a child in daycare. Renovating somebody’s home so that they can “age in place” (i.e. stay in their own home for as long as possible) is also an extremely expensive and cumbersome process, and may not even be possible in all cases. (Want to know more about the challenges of aging in place? Check out this episode of Viive Values with Patrick Brown of the Mandina Group.)

We live in an incredibly ageist society, with a whole lot of stigma and taboos around getting older. The prospect of aging makes many of us feel anxious, sad, even afraid of what is to come. But the truth is that aging can be an adventure in its own right. We just need to set ourselves up for success by planning well in advance. 

Start thinking about what you want your aging process to look like: do you want to live in a care facility, or at home? If you want to stay at home, what changes will have to be made in order for your home to remain accessible? Where will you find social connection and personal fulfillment after you’ve retired? Start thinking about these questions now—and start factoring them into your financial planning habits so that you’re prepared for anything. 

2. Making Advance Choices for Medical Intervention

If you end up seriously ill or injured, to the point that you couldn’t make decisions for yourself, what would you want your loved ones to do? And conversely: if you had to make life-or-death decisions on behalf of a loved one, how would you feel? 

This is a position that absolutely no one wants to be put in. Nobody wants to think about these stressful situations, so a lot of us put off planning for it. But trust us when we say the stress of navigating this scenario without a plan is far greater than the stress of sitting down to think it through ahead of time. 

To quote one of our favourite PSAs on this topic: love is not enough. No matter how much you love somebody, the only way to know for sure what they would have wanted is to talk to them about it. 

3. Talking to Your Loved Ones About Your Plans

Let’s say you’ve painstakingly gone through all of the first nine items on our list above. Amazing—great job! One last thing, though: does your family know what to expect?

Even if you already have a solid Aging & End of Life Plan in plan, it’s crucially important that your loved ones know what to expect. Grief is a very powerful and destabilizing experience; add a little entitlement into the mix, and you’re left with a deadly cocktail of emotions. If your loved ones aren’t prepared to hear the contents of your Plan, there’s much more risk that there will be some kind of conflict. This is how families end up embroiled in lengthy and bitter legal battles, fighting over relatively small amounts of money or parts of somebody’s Estate. 

Part of your Aging & End of Life Plan should include sitting down with your loved ones to talk them through your wishes. If you’re working with Viive on your Plan, we can organize and facilitate this meeting for you, to help ensure things run smoothly. This also gives your loved ones an opportunity to ask questions about your Plan, and allows you to explain your choices to them. 

This Month, Do More Than Make a Will

In conclusion: yes, you still need a Will. Don’t have one yet? Fix that ASAP. Have one but need to get it updated? Call up your lawyer, pronto. 

But there’s also a lot more we should all be thinking about than just the contents of our Wills. Aging & End of Life Planning is a holistic process. It touches every area of your life. The extra effort upfront is well worth the stress, heartache, and conflict you’ll be sparing your loved ones if anything should happen to you.