End Of Life Planning:

It Won’t Kill You

By Sara Zeff Geber

If you are over 50 and reading this, you have probably done some end-of-life planning. No? Time to get to work. You made a will 15 years ago? Not good enough. If you haven’t done anything or haven’t reviewed your planning in over five years, read on.

The key components of end-of-life planning are:

  • A will
  • A power-of-attorney for finances
  • A power-of-attorney for health care
  • An advance directive for health care
  • A trust for your assets

I am not an attorney, so I am not going to go into any depth about these legal documents. My intention is to rouse your interest in doing end-of-life planning by telling you about some novel and inventive ways to enhance it. So, even if you have done the basic planning with your estate attorney and have the documents on record, there are some new and interesting twists today that you may want to know about.

Traditionally, when the topic of end-of life planning comes up, the first item that comes to mind for most people is a will. If you are just beginning this journey a will is a good place to start and you may not need an estate planning attorney to take this first step. There are a number of online tools today for building a will, and some of them are so robust you may only need a couple of witnesses rather than an attorney.

FreeWill.com is one of the newest players in this space. Founded at Stanford University and launched in 2017, FreeWill (in the company’s description) “provides high-quality, intuitive online estate planning tools at no cost to the consumer.”  The founders, Patrick Schmitt and Jenny Xia, are young entrepreneurs with experience in finance and technology.

Several years ago, Patrick, who has a background in nonprofit fundraising and technology for social impact, was about to travel to areas that were not particularly safe for Americans. He decided the prudent thing would be to make a will. In doing so, he discovered that the process was more complicated and difficult than it needed to be, especially if one wanted to include any kind of planned giving to a non-profit. That event became the impetus for starting his company, FreeWill.com.

FreeWill strongly supports the inclusion of planned giving and it is built in to their will-creation software. Through their own research, they have discovered that single people are more than twice as generous as any other group when writing a will and single people who choose to leave a bequest are the most generous (2.5 times more than married people). FreeWill reaches out to singles through their marketing and because I often write about solo agers they reached out to me to help them spread the word.

I tried the online will creation form and discovered it to be very simple and straightforward. It took me less than the 20 minutes they suggest. Once I had completed the online form, I had the option to print it. Printing is necessary because for a will to be legally binding it must be signed by the principal and also by two witnesses. Then it can be kept stored in a safe place, including cloud storage. For larger, more complex estates, FreeWill suggests pairing the effort with a visit to an attorney and they provide the forms for doing just that. FreeWill will be rolling out additional end-of-life forms. A health care directive and a durable power-of-attorney are in the works.

An often-overlooked piece of end-of-life planning is the disposition of your remains after you have passed. I think many people have an even harder time facing this question when they are still healthy and strong, but making these plans ahead of time is one of the kindest gestures you can make for the loved ones you leave behind.

When I was still in my teens, my divorced father, age 55, purchased a burial plot and picked out a casket. He wanted to take me to see the burial park and the plot. I resisted, but he eventually wore me down and we went to visit the cemetery. About 15 years later, he created very specific plans for where he wanted his memorial service and who should be invited. Again, I resisted his efforts to share these plans with me, but he insisted. In addition to telling me, in great detail, what he had in mind for the burial service and the memorial, he also showed me where he kept all his important papers and took me to the bank to show me how to open the safe-deposit box where he kept some gold coins and other valuables.

It upset me to think about him dying; he wasn’t sick at the time and I couldn’t figure out why he was making all these seemingly-premature plans. Of course, years later he did die and it was fairly sudden. Amidst the shock of his passing I realized I did not have to make any decisions; all I had to do was put his plans in motion. It was the greatest gift he could have given me.

My father chose to be buried.  Now, thirty years later, my husband and I have chosen cremation and having our ashes scattered at sea near our Northern California home. The Neptune Society and the Trident Society (both subsidiaries of Service Corporation International) have pre-need programs for cremation. There are other cremation programs, but these two have been around the longest and that seemed important for a decision like this. They both have 5-year financing plans and other payment options.

There is also a green burial option today that may be appealing to you if you are concerned about traditional burial’s impact on the environment and use of open space.

As with so many later-life concerns, baby boomers are changing the landscape at the end of life. I think we can expect to see many more new concepts arise in the next two decades as this large population cohort enters the final decades of life.

Complete Article HERE!

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