Winsor Law Group Blog

Matthew K Palfreyman

The COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping perceptions, markets, and long held paradigms of modern society.  In many significant respects, Americans and Arizonans will not eat, play, work, or even plan in the same way ever again. A healthy, or perhaps unhealthy, view of our own mortality and the fragility of our systems in society has taken a metaphorical seat at the table in our minds serving regular plates of confusion, doubt, and even fear.   As always, truth and confidence will find its way to the head of the table and run the feast, but in the meantime we can all help each other by returning and relying on healthy personal and professional relationships, mutual understanding, and compassion.  

Toward such an end, this article is intended help educate you and your family for your next Estate checkup.  I recommend an estate checkup with my current and former clients at least once every three to five years in peaceful times, and certainly when major life events of births, marriages, deaths, divorces, or disability events happen inside their immediate family relationships. 

An estate is more than just property.  It is more than just balance sheet of assets and liabilities.   It is all those things AND the daily activities that maintain them.  More succinctly, it is you and all that you do.  It is very much like a living organism.  Symptoms of an unhealthy estate will manifest in different ways, but there are some strong parallels and learning that can be with the common symptoms of sickness like Sneezing/Coughing, Runny Nose, and Fevers/Chills.

Sneezing/Coughing:  Sneezing/coughing is an involuntary response by the body to attempt clear breathing pathways of troublesome elements present in the system or in the environment.  Sneezing is a warning to do something different or to get out of the environment!  Think of your last financial crises like an expensive car or home repair, or a big medical event.  Was your estate prepared with sufficient resources to handle the event? Were the documents establishing vicarious authority needed to deal with issues in place if your ability was limited? Sneezes are sometimes unavoidable, but they often happen unexpectedly.

The Juris Doctor recommends: a healthy diet of preparation and modifying or eliminating troublesome activities that are roots causes of the reaction.

The Runny Nose: The runny nose comes after a sneeze. It is a constant drip.  All we want to do is to get it to stop.  The drip is frustrating because it requires constant attention and drains our energy.  An estate with a runny nose is one that loses resources unproductively. 

The Juris Doctor recommends: Find the leak in the estate bucket and repair it.  You should experience a significant degree of relief from stress as your resources replenish.

Fevers/Chills:  For an estate, temperature control is determined by the people in it.  Attitudes, opinions, and personalities affect the health of an estate so much more than many think.  Indeed, planning around people is most often critical to an effective estate plan.  A good estate plan can be organized and efficient. A great estate plan understands the temperatures of the environment and plans accordingly.  The goal is to keep the administrative tone at comfortable temperatures for everyone involved.  If the environment is hot (contentious/dramatic) or cold (hidden/secretive) the other people affected by the estate are very likely to become, uncomfortable, unhappy, and sometimes litigious. 

The Juris Doctor recommends: Have a check up to see if anything can be done to balance strong personalities with cooler temperaments to avoid future controversy within an estate plan where possible. 

Thanks for reading, and do not neglect or forget to go see your Juris Doctor if your estate has any of the above unhealthy symptoms!

*The information provided in this article is of a general nature and reflects only the opinion of the author at the time it was drafted. It is not intended as definitive legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and you should not act upon it without seeking independent legal counsel.