Why don’t more people plan their estates?
A. Professionals often hear such comments as “What do I care how much money my kids get after I am dead; nobody ever left me anything.” Or, “Whatever they receive will be more than I did.” Many professionals believe that such statements camouflage one of the main reasons why more people do not estate-plan: because they are more frightened about running out of money while they are alive than they are of their heirs’ paying estate taxes after their deaths. They are fearful and insecure about the amount of their resources, and this fear does not generally have much to do with the actual resources at hand. It is felt just as strongly by people with estates of many millions of dollars as it is by people with modest estates. Also many people do not realize the very real problems of probate and estate tax that many seriously affect their families until they have personally experienced them after the deaths of their parents or close family members. Even though some people can minimize the impo
