Ten Commandments of Estate Planning Conversations

Good estate planners give their clients space for their emotional and spiritual needs. AI and online will preparation apps will never take account of your full self.  Among the lessons that attorneys must learn and clients can glean are ways to have difficult conversations about disability, dying, and death. The key to those conversations is offering prompts, acknowledging discomfort, and listening well. And the guidelines I use in my law practice will also serve well for deep family conversations.

Here are some tips I abide by when meeting with clients that might help you in difficult conversations.

1. Be direct. Don’t avoid an issue with euphemisms and platitudes. You can use words and phrases like “died” rather than “when you are gone.”
2. It’s emotional. A conversation focused on disability, death, and dying can evoke lots of emotions. Some responses are shaped by emotion or lead to emotional reactions. Acknowledging and channeling emotion into successful planning requires skill. For example, we should acknowledge emotions with questions such as “How does it feel to discuss this?”
3. Keep it simple. Estate planning can become rote to the professional. Technical terms and acronyms are likely to abound. I try to use plain language to move a conversation forward. I acknowledge what each person brings to the conversation in terms of experience and still try to employ plain talk as much as I can.
4. Digging for details.  While focusing on listening, I am also playing detective. I may seek information that seems absurd or irrelevant to my clients. My questions may be probing or might not land well. I offer my apologies upfront for any discomfort. I emphasize that I don’t want to miss out on important facts.
5. Skip immediate answers. Active listening is more valuable than problem-solving at first. Don’t begin conversations with a solution, like “you need a trust.” Rather, begin by inquiring about what the other person sees as the issues and challenges. The solutions will be available after you assess the concerns.
6. Manage Expectations. I always remind my clients that I am human. I can and do make mistakes. For that reason, I view estate planning as a team process, with the client’s engagement as essential to a good result. I also advise clients that if they are anxious to get their documents done, they should share their concerns directly with me. I am open to improvement and respectful nudges. Similarly, families should take the same open-hearted approach in their deliberations.  Acknowledge our fallibility and emphasize that we all want a good result.
7. Avoid distressing stories. Professionals all have war stories. I don’t share anecdotes about painful experiences. That adds fear, not comfort. I do allow for my own personal experiences as a guidepost without over-sharing. Similarly, clients may have their own stories about probate matters gone wrong they want to share.  Listening always is better then sharing in these settings.
8. Be practical. Frequently, we do too much planning. For example, clients may have heard from friends or financial planners that they “need to have a trust.” Let go of assumptions or “one size fits all” solutions. We don’t want planning and documents to be overly complex and too broad. Decide what is needed only after a full discussion of assets, competing interests, and legacy.
9. Time is Against Us. Life happens, and the consequences aren’t always pleasant. As time goes by, each of us is more likely to be ill, disabled or die. Accordingly, we should set a reasonable timeline for working on estate planning matters and bringing the process to a conclusion. By way of example, I had a client whose documents were complete, but they were hesitant to sign. Six months later, they died and the clients documents were unexecuted and of no use. The surviving family chose to be angry with me for not forcing my client to sign her documents – as if I could do that.
10. Plan for follow-ups. Always be open to a full process with initial meetings through to follow-up discussions. The promise of an ongoing relationship is satisfying to everyone. And estate planning needs change, requiring reconsideration of past plans and adjustments to documents.

Evan J. Krame