If you shared the reason with me why you’ve put off your estate planning today, I can promise you that I’ve heard the reason before at Truest Law!
So I get it: There are plenty of reasons to put off estate planning if you are a business owner.
Yet, I also know what to do about it so that you don’t leave the people you love at risk. Keep reading to find out more!
Reasons Why you Might be Procrastinating
1. Not Enough Time
When running a business, it can be a serious challenge just to get all of your most-pressing daily tasks done on time. This is especially true in today’s fast paced business environment, where you move from one task, one meeting, one email, one phone call, one text to the next—and before you know it… a year has gone by, and then another, and it just keeps going.
Hectic schedules can make it difficult to engage in forward-thinking, proactive business planning, especially estate and succession planning, which require deep introspective strategizing and can take many months, even years, to fully develop.
Estate planning is a big-picture, long-term process that naturally lends itself to procrastination, so a lot of business owners never get around to it. However, before you allow yourself to keep putting it off, consider how difficult it will be for the people you love—your clients, your team, and your family—if you become incapacitated or die without creating a plan.
So how do you find the time? Let us handle it with you. Start by scheduling a Family Wealth Planning Session with us, during which we can guide you through our step-by-step process.
2. No Support From those close to you
Although you do need to take the lead when creating your estate and succession plan, you will ultimately need input and action from family and key non-family team members. Given this, if your family and/or team don’t seem interested or resist your efforts to put a plan together, it’s easy to get discouraged.
It’s your job to lead and motivate your family and your team to treat planning with the respect it deserves. Of course, you’ll likely encounter some pushback, but as with any essential project, you must keep your eye on the prize. After you’ve completed our Life & Legacy Planning process, we’ll invite your family and key team members into the know, so they are fully aware of the parts of your plan that will impact them if something happens to you.
3. No Previous Experience
Chances are, you were not raised by a business owner who successfully passed on their business to the next generation. We can’t expect everyone to know what an effective estate and succession plan looks like. A lack of clear understanding can often lead to procrastination and even failure.
When it comes to estate and succession planning, it can be difficult to identify clear goals for a future that doesn’t involve you. This is only natural. This can make it feel impossible to even know where to start with your plan, much less identify what problems might arise and how to address them. But you have to start somewhere.
This is where experienced business lawyers like us come in. At Truest Law, we will support and guide you to create a comprehensive estate plan to ensure the company wealth, and legacy will not be lost after you’re gone.
Request a consultation today to get the ball rolling.
