What is an estate plan? An estate plan is a plan that comprehensively covers a lot of contingencies beyond just who gets what. Who gets what is definitely an important question, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. Estate planning covers also incapacity and disability. Who is making sure that your bills are paid and your assets are being managed if you can't do that? Who is making medical decisions for you, and who can talk to your doctors just to find out how you're doing? So, an estate plan covers that piece. It also covers guardianship. If you're parents of a minor child, you want to make sure that you've got the short-term emergency situation covered, who can be with your children overnight or for a short period if you need help, and then also who would raise them. That's long-term guardianship.
An estate plan covers that piece, and of course, as I mentioned, an estate plan covers who gets what. You might use a will to say that. You might use a trust. Check out our FAQs on what is a will and what is a trust to learn more about those. But, the important thing to note is that an estate plan is a comprehensive plan. It covers a lot of pieces, from incapacity and disability to passing away to what happens long after that. If you've got a child who needs assets, someone else in charge of assets for them until they're mature. What does that look like and how does that happen?
And also, the legacy component of estate planning really cannot be underestimated. Your family is going to remember you by the videos you leave behind, by letters you write, not by the bland legal documents. We need those and they need to be excellently drafted, which we do, but they're really going to care about a video or a letter or audio or photographs, that kind of thing. And so, the legacy component is just as important, in our opinion, as the legal documents. So, an estate plan covers all of those aspects.