We recently met with someone who shared a bit about a difficult experience handling the estate of a loved one who had no estate plan in place. 

This conversation reiterated the importance of having a plan in place – even if the estate isn’t so large that it will need a trust or other complex planning. Consider all of the details that your loved ones will face if you haven’t planned – such as accessing your house and caring for your pets, trying to work with doctors to determine who can make health care decisions on your behalf, weighing the heavy decisions about what health care decisions you would even want, trying to guess whether you would want to be buried or cremated, and then working with the court system to try to determine how your assets will be distributed under the laws of intestacy.