How many times have you seen or heard the commercials about Estate Planning?
Did they inspire you to prepare for the "End Times"?
ARE you prepared for said times?
From my experience and observations over the years, this should be of prime importance now, and well before the retirement years kick in.
My wife Nancy and I have seen too many cases of both family and friends hurting real bad when it's time for loved ones to leave us.
Both of my parents, my Step Dad, and both of Nancy's folks have passed. Pretty much in all cases, there wasn't enough preparation.
In my father's case, he passed at 56 when I was just 13 and my mom had to make it on her own.
Those were days when at age 46, she didn't even know how to drive; she never needed to, since my dad did all the driving.
The only way she kept the house was through death benefit checks from the government; when I left for college, she had to sell, and did not make any money out of the deal.
Years later she remarried a great man. What they did however was strange (perhaps it was the times); since they each had their own kids, they kept seperate financial accounts, instead of combining, something Nancy and I refused to do when we married after earlier...mistakes.
As it turns out, my Mom got Alzheimer's, and my step dad wasn't at all prepared, both as a caregiver, as well as planning for the time when she would have to be put in a facility.
So, because he didn't go through proper channels, the cost of my mom's facility living was entirely out of his pocket.
Just over three months from when she passed, he died, leaving a financial mess for my step siblings to argue over (if you thought the step sisters in Cinderella were nasty, you never met that side of my family).
In Nancy's case, her dad went a few years back, and to this day we STILL get a statement from the nursing facility asking for payment...of which there are no funds to even consider paying it and there's no one around to pay it!
My Mother In Law died a couple of months go, and without details here, it has been a mess, dealing with Medicaid, the bank (in dealing with her house), not to mention creditors through the roof.
My Father In Law was a very wise man; he had his arrangements all set so that no matter who went first, the other would be taken care of.
Even though we told him of the big problems with my folks, he thought that would never happen to him.
He was very wrong.
So even today, in addition to the statements from his nursing facility that we get every month, we now get them (along with calls) on behalf of my Mother In Law...and it's the same place as my Father In Law was in so they know the whole story.
There comes a time when businesses such as this just have to write off the balance due, since (A) there's no funds..or people..available to pay it and (B) it would cost more than that amount in the courts to even attempt to retrieve the money.
So, if you don't have a plan for that time, get it, now, and make sure it's ALWAYS up to date, especially if you're dealing with property and big ticket items.
The experience has FINALLY convinced Nancy and me to get the wills up to speed and make sure our loved ones will know what to do with us when we're not here.
On the positive side, even though she works for New York State, I'm in radio, our incomes cancel each others out, so there's just enough for "the box" when it's time.
Or as Billy Preston once sang; "Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing."
Mike Patrick
