This blog post was written by: Mario Gravel, Estate and Trust Consultant, Scotiatrust Ottawa

Allow me to share a story of a client interaction with you. Dear client, do you know how important it is to have a proper legal Will?  Yes. Check. You also know about the peace of mind that having a proper Will provides? Absolutely. Check.  Well, looks like all the ground has been covered, right?  Well, not quite. First off, there’s no such thing as an estate planning emergency; in fact, estate planning emergency is a contradiction in terms. It would be like saying high intensity meditation or high-altitude scuba diving. Getting a Will done on an urgent basis?  Sure, that’s a thing.  It’s not recommended, as haste too often makes waste, but it is an actual thing. On the other hand, urgent estate planning is an oxymoron. Estate planning is a process. Planning takes time and, when you have an emergency, you don’t have the luxury of time. What it is, is failure to plan. Back to my story – about 5 years ago, I started working with a client on his estate plan and went over the various elements of his personal circumstances and assets. The client had to make some decisions on a few issues arising from our discussions. It wasn’t the most straightforward of situations; blended family, children on each side, properties scattered over different jurisdictions, private corporations, recreational property, particular wishes around personal effects, and on and on. He had good intentions, and felt like at least like he’d started the ball rolling, however, follow-ups during the 5-year span were not met with any kind of meaningful response.

Then, one day, the client calls out of the blue – he requires immediate high-risk surgery, and he needs his Will done ASAP.  After over 5 years of putting it off, now all of a sudden, it’s urgent.  Really urgent, and nothing is done.  At first, the surgery is scheduled for a month out. Wait, new test results are back you say? Surgery is now 5 days out – with a long weekend right smack in the middle of it. Wait, yet more test results are in?  Surgery is moved up again, now only 4 days out and obviously still intersected by that same long weekend. The voice on the other end of the line suppresses a groan (or maybe a whimper?) catching it just in time as it hits the back of the lips. Raw human emotion laid as bare as can be. Despair, distress and disbelief at having let this go so long are palpable, and now there is no time. A month’s worth of wiggle room quickly turns into a week and, just as quickly, into a few short days. Time, precious time, being cruelly snatched away, again and again. It seems that fear of death is often too abstract when there is no crisis, but the distress that is felt by an unfortunate diagnosis after having procrastinated too long, and then having to deal with it on an emergency basis can be acutely unsettling.

It’s true that an urgent medical situation such as the one described here is the exception. What does, however, happen very frequently are unprepared clients who receive an unfortunate diagnosis where there are actually only a few weeks or months of life left, and it’s within that headspace that they now have to deal with their estate plan. Those situations are not ideal either, to say the least. Having seen many people go through that very experience is hard on everybody involved.

Do yourself and your family a huge favour and get your estate plan in order while there’s nothing else going on and your head is clear. As not fun and perhaps even uncomfortable as planning one’s estate is at the best of times, it is undeniably a more painful process trying to do so when circumstances are bleak, and everyone is under a lot of strain. If there’s a lesson here, do what you can to avoid that feeling where distress, disbelief and despair meet. It’s difficult to think of a statement as trite as saying that completing one’s Will provides peace of mind; I know from having uttered it too many times that it is often met with a shrug or polite deference like when someone has just stated something blatantly obvious. Rarely, however, does it light a fire under the person.

When considering why people put off doing their Wills, I can’t help but be reminded of Psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s thoughts on loss aversion in his New York Times bestselling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, where he says that we are driven more strongly to avoid losses than to achieve gains[1]. So, if the pursuit of a good feeling, like peace of mind, doesn’t spur you into action, then look at it the other way – and think of that horrible, sinking, helpless feeling you might well avoid if you make a proper legal Will. After all, procrastination (and we are all guilty of it, to one degree or another) is just a fancy word for avoidance. If you’ve been putting off getting your Will done, don’t put it off any longer – just think of what’s not in it for you.

[1] Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow, p.302