Start talking with your family about estate planning

While it can be awkward and difficult, it’s very important to discuss estate planning — planning for how one’s assets will be sorted out after death — with your parents and other members of your family while all of them are mentally healthy. If families wait to make arrangements until one parent is incapacitated in some way, it limits their choices.

One way to begin the discussion is to talk with parents and other family members about your own financial and estate plans. This could be the catalyst for others in the family to start thinking about and discussing their own estate plans.

The discussion might reveal that others have estate plans that you might not like. However, it is each person’s prerogative to make their own individual plan.

Though estate plans don’t always result in people being treated equally, it’s very important that family members know and understand what plans are in place. This will help prevent conflict later.

Here are a few tips to help you start the conversation:

Focus on life, not death. While the topics of estate planning and death are intertwined, it doesn’t mean that death has to be the focus of the discussion. Rather, focus on planning to live well, instead of planning to die well.

Encourage your parents and other family members to discuss their wishes. It’s important that your family discuss what they want to have done and who they want to do it. Ask your family what it is they would like you or others in the family to do in the event of an emergency. Ask them what documents are needed to assist them properly and where they are kept. Also, ask your family whom they want to make their health care and financial decisions if they are unable to articulate or make them for themselves. To ensure that each family member’s goals are met, all members of the family should be absolutely clear about their wishes.

The need for protection for the entire family should be emphasized. A formal estate plan helps to protect the entire family from creditors and possible predators.

Encourage parents and other family members to seek expert legal and financial advice. If you do this, you are setting an example while at the same time sending a message that you trust everyone else to handle their own affairs. This will help them breathe easier, knowing that you don’t want to control the situation. Offer to help them with their search for a qualified attorney.

Be patient, understanding, and realistic. The initial conversation with parents and other family members about estate planning will not be easy, and it will not be, nor should it be, the last one. It may take several discussions before even a little bit of headway is made. And even after estate plans are in place, these plans might need to be changed in the future, so there should be an ongoing dialogue and process.

Patricia Bloom-McDonald has a general law practice in Massachusetts.