takes place between your parent and the lawyer. Even when your parent feels that he or she wants the moral support of you being there, you should try to avoid being in the room. If it cannot be avoided that you are there, stay quiet and let your parent do the talking. If you are the one asking and answering the questions, you are the one getting the legal advice and not your parent. Also, the fact that your parent cannot speak for himself or herself may mean that capacity is already diminished, and hiding this fact from the lawyer is only going to result in the wrong documents being prepared. The lawyer may even refuse to prepare documents for your parent unless the lawyer is able to meet alone with the parent for at least part of the meeting. This should be comforting to your parent in that it shows that the lawyer is interested in helping the parent achieve his or her goals only.
7. Not Knowing How to Hold a Family Meeting
Plenty of people might like the idea of getting together with everyone and having a meeting, but most families are not in the habit of holding formal meetings. In fact a family meeting, particularly a formal one with note-taking and a chairperson, would be rare to nonexistent for the majority of families. Most of us would not know how to go about it, how to gain the cooperation of others, or what to do afterward to make everything legally effective.
In other families, there are topics that are not only left unmentioned, they are purposely avoided. In some families, subjects such as family finance or planning how to deal with the death of a parent are taboo. The parents simply do not wish to discuss financial or personal affairs with their children under any circumstances. These are the hardest families in which to hold a meeting because the culture of the family works strongly against the success of such a meeting. Generally emotions will run the highest in this type of family, making rational conversations about legal topics very hard to hold.
This does not mean it cannot be done. It means that extra care must be taken to preserve the privacy and dignity of the parents so that they are comfortable. It also means that the children in this kind of family must have time and encouragement to adjust to their new roles in the family.
Reading this book will give you both an overview to help you set realistic expectations for a family meeting, and detailed information on holding the meeting itself. Consider sharing the parts of this book that you find most helpful with your family members.
8. There Is No Consensus on What to Do
This is not a reason to put off having a meeting. In fact, it is one of the best reasons in favor of having a meeting. One of the main goals of holding family meetings is to get to a consensus on important issues. It likely will not happen instantly. You should anticipate that it may take more than one meeting to make decisions, if people are starting with no preconceived ideas. Your first discussion will probably be a general one about the need to do some planning and to pinpoint the areas that need to be covered. After that you will set out some time lines and goals to be achieved and go from there.
If your family’s estate-planning needs are complex, realize that you may end up having several meetings, each of which builds on what was done or decided in the meeting before. This is not at all unusual. Estate planning is always a process and you should not be dismayed or discouraged by the fact that it will not be accomplished in one day.
You should understand that your family may never reach the point where everyone agrees about what should be done about your parents’ estates. Is the consensus of everyone on every issue actually necessary? Your parents might have plans that some of the children will agree with and others will not, but as it is your parents’ estates it is their right to make that decision. Perhaps the purpose of your family meetings is not to get everyone’s agreement but simply to let everyone know what your parents are planning to do. Perhaps everyone will have to agree to disagree.
9. Privacy Concerns
Anyone undergoing the process of estate planning will have to divulge detailed information about his or her income, assets, and debts to the estate-planning lawyer. That is the only way a client is going to get accurate advice about what to do. Estate planning is like a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces (i.e., family, business, money, health, retirement) have to fit together, and they only fit if all of the pieces are revealed. The person who wants to do estate planning may also have to discuss these topics with an accountant or a financial advisor in order to get appropriate advice.
Many parents say that they do not want their children involved in the estate-planning process because they do not want to reveal confidential information to anyone other than their professional advisors. They believe their financial affairs are none of the children’s business, and it is their right to maintain that. Because of this wish for privacy, many parents put off their estate planning, believing that they must tell their children about everything they own.
This concern for privacy should not prevent your parents from going ahead with their planning. The extent of your involvement or that of your siblings or other family members can be controlled according to your parents’ wishes. It is everyone’s right to keep their financial and personal matters private if they so choose. Some parents choose to tell their children about their finances and others do not. It is very much a personal decision so you should do your best to work with it.
If your involvement in their planning goes no further than motivating them to get started, and perhaps helping them find a lawyer, you can probably alleviate most of their concerns about privacy. If they do not tell you themselves about what they own and the value of their holdings, there is no way for you to know about these things.
A compromise might be that your parents will tell you about the kind of assets they have, and possibly where the assets are located (e.g., where they bank and where title deeds are stored) without having to tell you the dollar amounts. This will allow them some amount of privacy while still allowing you and any professional advisors to understand the situation.
For example, you can understand whether the family home is owned by both parents or by only one without knowing the appraised value of it. You can know whether there is life insurance without knowing the dollar amount. You can know whether they still own shares in a business they retired from years ago without knowing the share value. In this way, you can preserve their privacy while getting going on the planning.
Even if you share the same lawyer with your parents, the lawyer is bound by solicitor-client confidentiality, which is the duty of every lawyer to keep each client’s legal affairs confidential. This can become extremely important in smaller towns where there are not many lawyers and whole families consult one lawyer about various matters. You can assure your parents that the lawyer will not share a client’s information with anyone, including family members, without specific permission from them to do so.
People also sometimes feel that during the estate-planning process, they are being pressured into revealing financial details that they would otherwise prefer to keep private. Many older people just do not like letting the world in general know how much they have put away and it makes them uncomfortable and resentful if they are pressured for that information. They should not have to reveal information they do not want to reveal to family members.
Understand that estate planning can be done without your parent having to divulge details about the amounts held in bank accounts or investments. The type of asset and the way it is held (e.g., joint owners, sole owner) are much more important in the planning process than the actual dollar amount. If your parent is concerned about giving out too much financial information, suggest to him or her that he or she divulge that information only to the lawyer, who is not allowed to tell other people.
10. Superstition
A surprisingly large number of people fear that if they write a will, they are somehow fatally jinxing themselves. They fear that the act of signing that piece of paper that talks about their death will in some inexplicable way cause their death to occur. If this were actually the case, a large fraction of our society would pass away every day, as wills are signed all over the world.
Superstitions