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Inspiration

We won't be here forever

f you're an ISO owner, merchant level salesperson • Children, spouses and ex spouses will fight. It will
or other payments professional who has a properly likely continue for a long time and be expensive.
signed and witnessed will tucked away, you might • Sentimentality and practicality will clash. You may
I think every smart person with assets to protect takes want your daughter, for example, to have your
care of this. Unfortunately, this is not the case. mother's wedding ring, but other heirs might want
to sell it for cash.
According to an article in The Conversation written by law
professors Reid Kress Weisbord and David Horton, 68 • You won't be there to clarify different recollections
percent of American adults had no will in 2020, which is of your wishes, and some heirs will accuse others
up from 2016 when LexisNexis reported 55 percent of that of lying.
population had no will. Two surprising examples of peo- • If you have pets, they may not be cared for.
ple who died intestate are Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer in
addition to being the sixteenth U.S. president, and, more • You may not get the kind of funeral or memorial ser-
recently, the brilliant musician Prince. vice you want.

Common reasons why people delay estate planning are: I once had a friend who died suddenly when in his late
forties. He had found the love of his life a few years prior.
• A perception that they are too busy to address it right They'd recently become engaged and moved in together.
now But instead of walking down the aisle, his bride-to-be
• A belief that their death is in the distant future, so was booted out of the home they shared and not allowed
there's no pressing need to get it done to participate in planning his funeral arrangements. She
• A belief that their spouse will inherit their property even had to fight to reclaim her own clothes and jewel-
ry. He had never prepared a will. Extended family, from
whether they have a will or not whom he had long been estranged, took control and liqui-
• An inability to face the inevitability of their own mor- dated everything he owned in record time.
tality
Don't let this happen to you. Your heirs will already be
If you're in this group, I urge you to start the process im- grieving your loss. Don't put them through the extra pain
mediately and set a goal for when you intend to have your of having to wrangle with government agencies and in-
will completed. sensitive relatives grabbing for a chunk of your estate.
Making this passage as easy as you can for those you leave
What can go wrong? behind will be an enduring sign of your love for them.

There are multiple downsides to not having a will. In a
May 13, 2016, article published by Huffpost, Ann Brenoff
listed several "nasty" things that can happen if you die
without a will. Among them are:

Kate Gillespie, President and CEO
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