Money Talks Podcast: Legacy planning – Draw up wills and nominations to avoid ugly disputes later

Andrea:
At what point in my life should I start thinking about drawing up my legacy plan? Obviously, if you’re saying that doing it in your seventies and eighties, when you are facing your mortality, that’s when things start to get really urgent, right? But if that’s not the case and that’s not recommended, what do you recommend?

Lionel: 
Having a plan or discussing a plan doesn’t mean you have to do something about it. So I’ll say that to start thinking about it and to have a discussion about it with a professional … the minute you are married. 

Andrea: 
Because you are introducing a new family member to the household.

Lionel:
Yes, especially if you want to take care of your spouse. So (it’s easy) when a person who is single. If (an) accident happens, everything goes to the parents. But when a spouse comes in, we … start thinking about how (to) take care of (our) spouse. I have clients who told me that they thought if anything happens, they will just pass all their money to the spouse to handle and the spouse will take care of the parents for him.

But the spouse told him during a discussion with me, that she rather not hold the money meant for the parents to prevent any misunderstandings, even though they are on very good terms now.