Having an estate plan is a good way to protect your Indiana loved ones. If you have reason to believe your parents haven’t yet taken these necessary steps, you should bring up the subject with them.
Don’t wait
Now is the best time to talk to your parents about estate planning. The future is uncertain and no one ever knows what might happen. Even if they are both perfectly healthy now, accidents can happen and they could become incapacitated or ill. Explain that they need to take action now and not wait because they need to protect themselves, their assets and their heirs.
Make sure the entire family is involved
If you have siblings, you will want them to be involved in discussing your parents’ estate plan. Approach the situation sensitively, but be firm and stress the importance of various documents. Your parents should have wills, financial and medical powers of attorney, a health care proxy and beneficiary designations. Some people choose to have a living will to dictate how their end-of-life care should be handled and a trust to hold assets for their children or other beneficiaries.
Discuss updating estate planning documents
Chances are, your parents already have a last will and testament and beneficiary designations. Ask them where these documents stand; if the will was created several years earlier, there may be different circumstances in the family that require them to make changes. Updating beneficiaries is also necessary in certain situations. For example, if a beneficiary has died or is estranged or there is a new family member to whom they wish to leave an inheritance, they will have to update these documents.
Estate planning is one of the most important things your parents can ever do. You need to know where their estate plan stands in order to ensure that they and their loved ones protected.
