He was a successful small business owner and was financially responsible and savvy. But he was also very private with his money; even my mother wasn’t sure where his various accounts were held. It took dozens of phone calls, hundreds of emails, and several in-person visits to different bank branches to locate and administer all his accounts.
Thankfully, his last will and testament were current, clear, and drafted by professional estate lawyers. Settling an estate is a demanding emotional and physical task, but having a valid and current will make things that much easier for us.
Estate planning is a simple task for DIY financial planners, but finding the willpower (pun intended) to take the first step can be difficult. Like life insurance, estate planning is a way to protect and care for your loved ones. But it’s hard to face the reality, especially when you’re young and it feels far off.
If you die without a will, known as dying intestate, the distribution of your assets will be subject to provincial laws and regulations.
No one wants the Government to determine where their assets go when they die. Yet less than one-third of Canadians say they have an estate plan, and less than half have a will.
If you are male and your partner is a woman, she will likely outlive you. Approximately 77% of Canadians who are widowed are women. This isn’t surprising because women tend to outlive men and often marry older men. The average age of widows is only 56.
There’s evidence that the inability to confront our mortality has a basis in neuroscience.
Researcher Yair Dor-Ziderman at Bar Ilan University in Israel, together with his colleagues, conducted a study on this subject and found, “The brain does not accept that death is related to us. We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.”
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