Overall, 67% of Americans have not engaged in estate planning. Estate planning is a legal agreement that allows an individual to decide who they choose to be responsible for their assets and healthcare in the event of their demise or incapacity.
In this article, we’ll discuss why estate planning is important and the reasons why most people fail to create an estate plan.
Why is Estate Planning Important?
Estate planning ensures that your loved ones and dependents are not burdened with years of legal trouble to access the assets that you left behind. If you die without an estate plan, your assets would be distributed according to your state’s interstate laws regardless of who you would have wanted to inherit your assets. By creating a will or trust, you would have the peace of mind of knowing that your family members are taken care of after you have passed on.
There is no wealth barrier to preparing end-of-life documents. Contrary to what some may believe, estate planning isn’t only for the wealthy. Every individual should have the opportunity to create a plan that takes care of their needs as well as that of their loved ones.
Reasons Why Most People Fail to Create an Estate Plan
According to Caring.com, the top four reasons why most US citizens have not prepared any end-of-life documents are that they haven’t gotten around to it, according to 40% of the respondents, 33% don’t have enough assets to pass on to anyone, 13% claim that it’s too expensive to set up an estate plan, and finally, 12% responded that the don’t know how to go about creating a will or trust.
Additionally, 9% of respondents stated that they don’t have anyone to leave their assets to, 6% claimed that the process took too long, and 4% are concerned about inflation rates and the current financial market.
The survey also revealed that 61% of people who don’t have a will haven’t even begun thinking about the estate planning process or writing a will and 2 out of 3 postgraduates cited that they had not gotten around to creating an estate plan as their reason for failing to create a plan.
Although 56% of Americans have agreed that estate planning is either very important or somewhat important, 67% of people still have failed to take the necessary steps to create a plan for themselves.
Interestingly, the survey has revealed that 66% of people who experienced a severe case of COVID-19 are more likely to have an estate plan. It can therefore be concluded that procrastination is the leading cause behind the lack of estate planning taking place in the US. Many times, healthy people believe that they have enough time to get around to writing up a will and ignore it until it’s too late. If you are in need of a will or trust please contact us to schedule an appointment with us at 1.307.228.0407.
