Young adults may feel a temptation to put off planning for things like what would happen upon their incapacity or death. After all, a young adult will have plenty of years ahead of them to tackle these planning issues, right?
Tragically, the answer to this is sometimes no. A sudden illness or accident could leave a young adult experiencing incapacity at a very young age or passing away long before their time.
The fact that such unexpected events can strike a person of any age is one of the big reasons why estate planning is not just important for older adults, but for adults of all ages.
If a young adult makes no will, sets up no advanced health directives and does no other types of estate planning, they could be risking far more than they realize. If a tragic unexpected event occurs to a young adult which incapacitates or kills them and they have no estate plan, many negative things could result, including:
- The young adult receiving medical treatment different from what they would have chosen.
- The young adult’s family having to make tough decisions regarding the young adult’s medical care without guidance as to what the young adult would have wanted.
- The young adult’s assets (both financial assets and assets with sentimental value) being distributed in a different way upon their death than they would have desired.
- The young adult’s social media accounts being used in a way they wouldn’t have wanted them to be used after their death.
- The young adult not having any mechanisms in place to help defray funeral costs for their family upon their death.
Thus, for adults of any age, it can be vital to not delay when it comes to thinking about and taking appropriate action regarding estate planning issues.
While estate planning is an important thing for an adult to do, regardless of their age, an incorrect assumption that it is important to not draw from this is that individual circumstances don’t matter at all in estate planning. On the contrary, the individual details of a person’s life (such as their age, their relationship status, their family situation, their financial situation and their individual goals) matter greatly, as they can heavily influence what type of estate plan is best suited for a person. Thus, personalized legal help can be an important thing for anyone to have when working on estate planning.