WHEN IS THE “RIGHT TIME” TO BEGIN ESTATE PLANNING?

Recently, I was asked by a young, healthy, successful, single female professional when she should start thinking about estate planning. Although I wanted to scream “yesterday!”, I did not. Instead, I hemmed and hawed so that it would not appear that I was trying to “sell” my services or to be unnecessarily alarmist. Then I attended a presentation concerning estate and financial planning issues for people with chronic illness, which reinforced my backbone so that I may answer this type of question more forthrightly in the future.

Estate planning is not only about protecting others by planning how you leave your assets after death. In fact, you should start by protecting yourself and planning for the possibility that you may become disabled. There are 120 million Americans today living with chronic illness or disability. They are not all elderly. Sixty percent (60%) of those living with chronic illness are between the ages of 18 and 64. The time to protect yourself is now.

Another young, 30-something female professional friend of mine recently was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Statistics show that eighty percent (80%) of those diagnosed with MS are women (seventy percent (70%) of those are single), and the diagnosis most often is made when the female is in her 30’s. If you wait to begin estate planning until after you are diagnosed with a chronic illness, it may be too late. Although you can have legal documents prepared after such a diagnosis of a physical illness, the opportunity to purchase long-term care insurance, disability insurance or even a life insurance policy to provide the protection and financial means to pay for the estate plan, may be gone. If you become mentally disabled, it will be too late to do any planning at all.

So, the true answer is that it is never too soon to start your estate planning. We are here to help.