Instructions

One of my favorite novels is The Girl The Gold Watch & Everything by John D. MacDonald. The book starts with the main character’s extremely wealthy uncle dying and the main character receiving only the gold watch of the title. That’s it. Nothing else. No documents. No videos. No instructions of any kind. The rest of the book is about the character’s adventures as he figures out what his real inheritance is and how to claim it.

Why am I mentioning an old book in our weekly post? Two words:  NO INSTRUCTIONS!

We have posted several articles about Estate Planning and preparing documents and talking with your parents about doing all of those things before it is too late. But we have not mentioned the importance of telling someone what those plans are. You can have the greatest estate plan in history but it does you no good if no one else knows about it.

We recently heard about an acquaintance of ours who has been diagnosed with dementia. He is elderly and has no family or close friends in Houston. If he has a plan that names a caregiver no one knows what it is. If he named financial or medical agents under powers of attorney no one knows where he kept his documents. His condition changed and now he is unable to communicate that information to anyone.

Our acquaintance’s situation is not as entertaining as The Girl The Gold Watch & Everything. And we are sure he didn’t want his friends, family and heirs to be caught up in a MacDonald novel as they search for his estate planning documents and try to take care of him. We are also sure the entire situation could have been avoided if he had told someone what his plan was, who he wanted to take care of him, and where he kept all of his important documents. It would have been even better if he had written out his instructions and given copies to people he trusted to carry out his wishes.

But he didn’t do that. His wishes won’t be carried out. The people he loved won’t be taking care of him in his final days. He won’t get to decide who gets his property. All because he didn’t share that last vital piece of information in his Estate Planning:  What His Plan Was.