The gift they didn’t mean to leave

I spent some of my law school years living with my grandparents, studying at their kitchen table while they bickered lovingly about whose turn it was to make the coffee, a mundane experience that I now miss more than words can express.

This past spring, I lost them both unexpectedly and within mere weeks of each other. After 69 years of marriage, living without my grandfather was something my grandmother’s heart simply couldn’t handle. As an estate planning attorney, I thought I had a healthy understanding of loss and legacy. I learned that no amount of professional experience could have prepared me for how personally difficult the aftermath of their deaths would be.

My grandparents came from humble beginnings, and touched by the Great Depression, my grandfather preferred investments he could see and understand. Rather than placing much faith in the stock market, they built their retirement around real estate. Over decades, they accumulated a number of rental properties. It was a disciplined strategy that supported a long retirement filled with travel, but it also made settling their affairs quite complicated once they were gone.

My grandparents had wills that had been created decades ago, well before they had amassed their real estate portfolio. I talked to them about the benefits of trusts more than once, explaining as gently and clearly as I could that a properly funded trust could keep their properties out of probate, save their children time and money, and allow them to grieve without the added stress of an unnecessarily complicated and lengthy probate administration.

They would nod, agree wholeheartedly that updating their estate plan sounded like an excellent idea and then put it off.

I understand their hesitation better now. Estate planning requires us to confront uncomfortable realities: death, illness, dependence and the potential loss of control. Even those who understand the value of planning can find it difficult to take the next step and confront these uncomfortable possibilities head-on.

Failing to optimize their plan for a streamlined after-death administration of assets is one thing, but an even more consequential gap in my grandparents’ planning was their complete lack of incapacity planning. Neither had durable financial power of attorney or a health care power of attorney to designate a trusted person to handle financial transactions and make health care decisions on their behalf in the event of incapacity or unavailability.

My grandfather was petrified of being sent to a nursing home and never coming home again, so he avoided executing powers of attorney. Because of this, when difficult end-of-life decisions had to be made about his medical care, decisions that should have been guided by my grandfather’s own wishes expressed in his health care power of attorney had to instead be made without any such guidance, at a time when the family needed simply to be present with their loved one.

My background helped me identify issues, ask the right questions and lovingly nudge my grandparents in the right direction, but it could not remove the emotional burden of confronting these topics head-on. Professional knowledge after a crisis is no substitute for planning before one.

This experience reinforced four questions every adult should consider: Are my estate planning documents current and tailored to my particular situation? Are my assets and beneficiary designations consistent with my plan? Have I named trusted people to handle financial and health care decisions if I become incapacitated? Do those people know where to find my important documents?

The gift my grandparents never meant to leave was a lesson about unfinished planning. Love is not measured by the property we leave behind. Sometimes it is reflected just as clearly in the uncertainty we spare the people we love. A thoughtful estate plan can preserve your choices, give authority to the people you trust, simplify administration and reduce the number of difficult questions your family may someday have to answer.

Make those decisions while they are still yours to make. One of the greatest gifts you can leave your family may simply be the freedom to grieve without also having to untangle what was left unfinished.

Charley MacInnis is an attorney with LawyerLisa, LLC, based in the firm’s Irmo office located at 7511 Saint Andrews Road, Suite 3, Irmo, SC 29063. LawyerLisa is an Estate and Life Care Planning firm with six offices across the state of South Carolina. This article is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.