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Your Final Gift to the Ones You Love

At a seminar on planned giving recently, I heard an estate planning attorney say something that tends to be at the heart of the challenges we all face in terms of creating or updating our wills.
His comment was, “Getting your will together is usually at the bottom of everyone’s to-do list.”
Isn’t this true for us all? After all, except in rare occasions, none of think we are going to die anytime soon. I mean, I have a whole list of things I need to get done that are more pressing than updating my will, right?
In my role as Director of Donor Relations and Planned Giving, I get to speak with many people about their plans for their estates after they leave this mortal coil. If they are content with their plan, they often tell a story of personal introspection and a journey of great fulfillment that ends with them knowing that their loved ones and the causes they support will have some closure in their passing. If they are not content with their plan, they always share a level of stress and concern that they need to address the issue right away.
‘Getting your affairs in order’, as one of our Board Members puts it, is extremely empowering. It is like life insurance for the good intentions and deliberate parenting you worked on your entire life.
My family suffered a tremendous tragedy this past June when my mother-in-law suddenly passed away. My father-in-law had died just a year previous, so my wife was faced with being the executor of two estates, with no real life experience to help her. Probating the will of your last parent is like getting married or having children: nothing prepares you for it, but once you’ve done it, you are nearly an expert. But unlike the first two examples, there is no payoff of great joy after an arduous journey. In fact, it can become an obstacle to the complicated and nuanced grief process that accompanies losing a parent.
But let’s be blunt: losing your parents is like being hit by a truck. You are stunned, hurt, confused and in a territory you’ve never been. Emotions vie with responsibilities within your already damaged psyche. The will you leave for your children is their only guide, their only map to navigating the physical world you left behind.
Your will is your last act as a parent to help them stand up and recover after the truck drives away.
Doesn’t that sound like something that might want to be at the top of your to-do list?

 

Eric Scott has been the Director of Donor Relations and Planned Giving at Seminary of the Southwest since June of 2013. A lifelong Episcopalian, he has spent most of his career fundraising for theatre in New York and Austin. He and his wife Laura have two young daughters, ages 7 and 10 months. They just re-did their wills last month.

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