SURVEYS SHOW ESTATE PLANNING OFTEN OVERLOOKED
It would be logical to assume that most responsible adults have an estate plan in place. However, the sad truth is that a majority of Americans are going through life without an estate plan and this is not a good thing because it is your family who will pay the price if you fail to make the proper preparations.
There was an article in Forbes a while back that examined the subject of estate planning preparedness and it utilized statistics provided by a Harris interactive survey. The Harris organization interviewed 1022 adults, and they found that only 35% of them had a last will in place.
An even smaller number had a living will. Just 29% of the people surveyed had executed this important advance health care directive.
As you might expect the younger people who participated in the survey were less well prepared than the older ones. Less than one in four of the people who were under the age of 35 said that they had executed at least one estate planning document. But even among older people a lack of preparedness was evident with almost one-fourth of participants over the age of 55 saying they had no estate plan.
If you are one of the many who is procrastinating you may well be putting your family at risk. The responsible course of action is to take the first step and arrange for a consultation with a San Bernardino Estate Planning attorney so that you can put together a cogent plan for the future.