Why “I’ll Get to It Eventually” Is the Most Expensive Sentence in Estate Planning
Here’s something most estate planning attorneys know: the hardest client decision is just starting. If you’ve been meaning to get your estate plan done for months (or years), it’s not laziness and you are not alone. There are very real, very understandable reasons this particular task keeps sliding to the bottom of the list. This blog talks through those reasons and helps you reframe how to think about and approach your estate plan.
The Anatomy of Estate Planning Inertia
Procrastination implies that you are avoiding something easy. Estate planning inertia is not procrastination. It’s paralysis in the face of important feelings, decisions, and fears.
The emotional weight. Estate planning asks you to think about things most of us spend our lives trying not to think about. This includes your own mortality, a spouse or parent (or yourself) losing capacity, or a child growing up without you. That is not a task you knock out between errands.
The overwhelm of not knowing where to start. Wills? Trusts? Power of attorney? Guardianship? Beneficiary forms? The moment you start searching on the internet, you get buried in terms that all sound important and none of which tell you which one you actually need.
Family Conflict. This is a big one. Making choices as to distribution of assets or who are your “power people” to act for you can trigger many feelings. Making hard choices, such as leaving more assets to one child who provided long-term care, deciding who gets your engagement ring, or omitting an estranged relative, forces people to officially acknowledge and validate family inequalities. It is easier to avoid these family discussions and any potential disagreements or hurt feelings.
And underneath all of it, there is fear. Not just fear of dying, but fear of what planning for it might mean. That putting a plan on paper somehow makes it more real. That thinking about it invites or manifests it. Logically, we know that’s not how it works. Emotionally? It can feel exactly that way.
The money question. It’s a fair thing to wonder about since many attorneys charge differently, and it’s hard to know what’s reasonable without more information. But it’s worth putting that number next to what happens without a plan. Under Virginia’s fiduciary compensation guidelines, an executor on a $500,000 estate can be entitled to roughly $24,000 in fees alone. On a $5,000,000 estate, that number could climb to over $120,000. Add attorney fees, court costs, and probate tax, and the total often runs even higher. A properly drafted plan is a one-time, known cost. Probate without one is an open-ended cost, paid by the people you were trying to protect.
Due to some or all these issues, the estate planning “to-do” stays in the drawer or unchecked. The “I’ll do it after the holidays” becomes “I’ll do it this summer” becomes “I really need to-do that.” Then, years pass by and you’ve still not made a plan. This is normal. It’s also worth gently interrupting.
Reframing Your Thoughts About Estate Planning: This Isn’t Planning for Death. It’s Planning for Control.
All the inertia about estate planning, driven by the fears above, is reasonable and understandable but I want to offer you a different way to think about estate planning. Estate planning isn’t a monument to your death. It’s an act of authority over your own life and your family’s future, while you’re here to shape it.
Without a plan, you don’t get less death planning. You get someone else’s plan. A court decides who manages your affairs if you’re incapacitated. State law decides who inherits from you, and in what proportions, regardless of what you actually wanted. A judge, although competent and well-intentioned, is still a stranger. But that is the person who may decide who raises your children. Your family, already grieving, gets handed a legal process instead of a roadmap.
To further explain what a proper estate plan can do, it helps to know what “I’ll get to it eventually” can quietly cost:
Your family may need court involvement just to act on your behalf. Without a power of attorney, someone else can’t simply step in and manage your finances or make medical decisions if you’re incapacitated. Instead, they may need to petition a court for guardianship or conservatorship, which takes time, money, and a judge’s approval to step in and act on your behalf.
State law, and not your wishes, decides who inherits. If you die without a will, your state’s intestacy laws take over. Depending on your family situation, that can mean a spouse and children unintentionally competing for a share, an estranged relative inheriting something you never intended, or a loved one who isn’t legally “family” (such as a partner, a close friend, a stepchild you raised) receiving nothing at all.
Minor children’s guardianship is left to a judge. If you have young kids and no named guardian, the court decides who raises them, based on limited information and its own view of their best interest, not necessarily yours.
Special needs beneficiaries can lose benefits entirely. Leaving money directly to a loved one with a disability, without a special needs trust in place, can unintentionally disqualify them from Medicaid or SSI benefits they depend on.
Assets can be frozen or delayed for months. Probate without a clear plan often takes longer, costs more, and creates more friction. Worse, it’s happening right when your family is emotional or grieving and has the least bandwidth to deal with it.
Your family is left guessing, at the worst possible moment. Even beyond the legal mechanics, there’s the human cost: siblings disagreeing about what Mom “would have wanted,” a spouse making end-of-life medical decisions with zero written guidance, and grief tangled up with logistics that didn’t need to be there.
You Don’t Have to Have It All Figured Out to Begin
You don’t need to arrive with all the answers figured out as to what kind of plan you want, “who gets what”, or what your healthcare choices are. That’s what this process is for - working through it together, one honest conversation at a time.
Estate planning, done well, isn’t merely a legal transaction. It’s a series of decisions, guided by an attorney, that quietly hand you back control. It allows you to make decisions that are best for your family and your personal situation. You choose who’s in charge if you can’t be, you decide how your family is cared for, and you control the story your absence tells, instead of leaving that story to a courtroom.
Today may not be the day that you take this step. But if you’ve been carrying that quiet, nagging feeling of “I really should handle this”, consider this your gentle nudge that starting doesn’t have to feel like the mountain it’s built itself up to be in your mind. It usually just takes one conversation to get moving.
Ready to talk it through? I’d love to help.
Jennifer R. Seifert
Email: Jenniferseifert@fernhavenpllc.com
Website: www.fernhavenestateplanning.com
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