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Procrastination Leads to Chaos: Tips for Creating an Estate Plan By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi July 22, 2024 According to the 2024 Caring.com Wills Survey , 64 % of Americans state having a will is important, yet only 32% have one.  The study also reports that of those surveyed, 43% of respondents would wait until receiving a major medical diagnosis or having a serious health event to create an estate plan. After nearly 20 years of practicing estate planning and probate, I can say with confidence that waiting until you are really, really sick to create a plan is setting yourself up for a very difficult task -- likely increasing your chance of never actually completing a plan.  For example, any of the following may make it difficult if not impossible to create a plan for what happens at death: Your schedule is overtaken by medical appointments, tests and procedures leaving little time to dive into estate planning; Medications given for your treatment impair your ability to think...

Book Review: Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love by Mallory McDuff by Melinda Gustafson Gervasi July 12, 2024 Based on the recommendation of a longtime friend, I recently read Mallory McDuff's 2021 book, Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love .  Unlike many other green burial style books I have read, this one is more memoir than resource guide.  McDuff, an environmental educator at Warren Wilson College outside of Ashville, North Carolina spends a year exploring cost-effective and environmentally friendly burial options.  She states that many of her friends assume that flame cremation is greener than a conventional burial.  While that may be true, she sought alternatives that use smaller amounts of fossil fuels and include the family in after-death care.  Chapters explore options such as burials using shrouds and pine boxes to water-based cremation (k...

Independence, the Young Adult and Estate Planning by Melinda Gustafson Gervasi July 5, 2024 Goose Family (2 parents, 2 kids) on Lake Superior. Image Credit, Charles J. Gervasi, July 2024 Independence, it's on my mind this week as we celebrate America's freedom from the English crown.  It's also on my mind having spent a few days exploring Minnesota with my family.  It is a lovely area to spend long summer days; and the Twin Cities a viable college option for one if not both of my high school aged children.  The transition to adulthood is coming on fast, I can feel it.  With high school graduation and the magic age of 18, my children will have so many more freedoms.  And as a parent, I will loose the control that has been a part of the parenting process. At the age of majority, which is normally 18, a child becomes an adult.  Decisions related to health care and finances become theirs and theirs alone.  In my home state of Wisconsin that means, as a par...