I hope that everyone had a wonderful long weekend and has been able to check a couple of items off their summer “bucket list”. If the summer has been passing you by a little too quickly, and you feel that you are missing out—don’t worry! A recent essay in the Wall Street Journal makes the case for, at the least, scaling back on bucket lists:

Nobody really needs to go falconing in Mongolia or ride on the back of a nurse shark in Alaska for their life to be complete. They need to raise kids who won’t grow up to hate them. Or take care of their aging mother and make sure she gets a nice send-off.

That being said, there are a couple of things that we at Hull & Hull would recommend adding to your “bucket list”:

• Have a Will and Powers of Attorney: If you don’t take the time to set out what your wishes are, you risk those wishes being either unknown, or not respected.

• Review your Will and Powers of Attorney & Know what they say: You should be confident that you not only know exactly what your Will and Powers of Attorney say, but that they continue to represent your wishes. Particularly if your estate planning documents were prepared a number of years ago, it is important to review these documents and ensure that you recall their contents, so as to avoid any unexpected outcomes. If you are familiar with the contents of your Will and Powers of Attorney, you are more likely to be triggered by changes in circumstances that may affect you, and to take steps to adjust your estate planning documents accordingly.

• Revisit your estate plan: It is important to review your estate plan and consult with your lawyer regularly. There are a number of life events that can impact the effect of your Will, including marriage, divorce, the birth of a child, the death of an estate trustee, the death of a beneficiary, a beneficiary developing a disability, changes in the law, and the list goes on. If you aren’t revisiting and updating your Will regularly, based on changes in circumstances, the way in which your estate is ultimately distributed on your death could be vastly different than what you originally envisioned.

Thanks for reading,

Rebecca Rauws

You may also find these other posts to be of interest:

• The Twelve Days of Estate Planning
• Does your estate plan need a touch up?
• The Importance of a Power of Attorney – OBA’s Power of Attorney Month