MW The top 3 excuses people make to put off estate planning - and why they're all wrong

By Beth Pinsker

Can these experts talk you out of doing nothing to get your affairs in order before it's too late?

When Jessica Tillery's video of her paging through the organizational binder for estate planning called "The Deadbook" that she and her husband developed went viral, she thought she had a hit on her hands. Finally, somebody was reaching the younger audience on TikTok and Instagram and getting them to take their futures seriously. Orders piled up for the $49.99 book, and people clamored for a digital version to put all their paperwork and account information in order.

Then Tillery realized through follow-ups with customers that the number of people who actually made a purchase was much smaller than the number of people interested, and those who did purchase the book didn't crack it open.

"People were saying, 'this is brilliant, would you take it digital?' so we got to work," Tillery said. "Then we talked to customers who bought physical books, and we kept hearing, 'Amazing idea, but it's just sitting on my shelf.' And of the 500 people on the waitlist for the online version, not a single one signed up when we launched."

"The Deadbook" died about a year after launching, basically of natural causes related to the inability of people to tackle any estate-planning tasks.

Trust & Will, an online service for creating estate-planning documents, has had better success cracking the code, but is still struggling to increase the percentage of Americans who have wills, trusts, powers of attorney and healthcare proxies set up. In its annual report on the state of the estate-planning industry, it found in 2024 that only 31% of people have a will, the same ratio as in many prior years.

What is stopping people? In Trust & Will's survey, none of the top responses hinged around people avoiding the difficult topic of confronting their own mortality. We all know we're going to die one day, and that there are things we should put in order before that time comes. Most people just don't think that day is today, and so estate-planning tasks can be put off for another day.

I asked some industry professionals to take on that bad logic. Here's what they had to say about the top three reasons people stated for not tackling their to-do list.

1. Not necessary - I don't believe I have enough assets

Even if you have a negative net worth when you die, you can still leave a mess behind for your loved ones. It's not about the amount of money, it's about your connection to civil society. If you are in a nursing home and the only assets to your name are a bank account that has a beneficiary named, you don't necessarily need a will, but you certainly need a healthcare proxy to designate somebody to make decisions for you if you are incapacitated, and you need a financial power of attorney in case you can't handle financial transactions. In most cases, you probably also need a designated representative with Medicare and, perhaps, Medicaid, and also for Social Security.

Rachel Donnelly, an "after loss professional" who helps loved ones deal with the financial and legal details after a death, has been helping one woman whose husband died in debt. Normally, the creditors would write off the loss if an estate didn't have enough to cover the amount owed, but one creditor will just not go away. "They can't come after the wife, but they can go after the estate," Donnelly said, because in this case the husband jointly owned a family property with relatives and the creditor has been hanging on to get his piece of that through collections.

"We try to appeal to their humanity. We want to work this out in some way," said Donnelly, author of "Late to Your Own Funeral: How to Leave a Legacy and Not a Logjam." They are nine months into this battle, which has been protracted because the man who died had a will, but not a trust. A will leaves it up to the courts to work out a settlement, and that takes time and money for lawyers, whereas a trust would have immediately settled the ownership issue and freed up the needed funds to get the creditor off their backs.

2. Procrastination

Sheer procrastination is a tough one to fight. It has been especially hard to fight this one as estate-tax thresholds have been in limbo for the past year or so. Are the current estate-tax limits sunsetting at the end of 2025 and getting cut in half, or are they not? "People keep asking, 'Should I do something now, should I wait?' There's a lot of procrastination because people are uncertain about what to do, and in those periods, people do nothing," said Chuck Cavanaugh, head of financial planning for Citi Personal Wealth Management.

Before the 2024 election, most planners were leaning toward figuring that the estate-tax limits would get cut in half at the end of this year, which would mean that any family with more than $7 million should take estate-planning actions to avoid taxes. After the election, they paused and thought that surely Congress would extend the current levels as part of President Donald Trump's agenda. Now they are not so sure. If no legislation goes through by July, most estate lawyers and financial planners will start recommending that their clients take action. "We explain that estate planning isn't just about estate-tax liability," Cavanaugh said. "It's about what you are going to do with your stuff when you die? What will happen to your children?"

3. Lack of knowledge - I don't know where to start

Tillery's "Deadbook" was a place to start - it walked you through how to gather up the documents your family would need if you die and keep them all in one place that could be easily accessed. If you don't do this, the family needs to go on a scavenger hunt. One family Tillery worked with said they found the deceased's important documents under a tarp in the back of an old pickup truck in a shed. "It's not logical where people put their documents," she said.

Tillery said that even if you don't buy a binder or sign up for a web service, there's a lot of information out there, either in books or on websites. The key thing she said to know is that the more you do ahead of time, the easier it is for your loved ones after the fact.

After working with over 100 estates and seeing the same blind spots, Donnelly agreed. "There's no better estate planner than somebody who has gone through this dumpster fire and is really incentivized. They say, 'I'm never doing this to my family members.'"

Got a question about investing, how it fits into your overall financial plan and what strategies can help you make the most out of your money? You can write to me at beth.pinsker@marketwatch.com. Please put "Fix My Portfolio" in the subject line.

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-Beth Pinsker

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April 17, 2025 09:00 ET (13:00 GMT)

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