As we head into Thanksgiving weekend, I am sharing a guest post written by my son. Earlier this year, he and his partner celebrated a beautiful wedding surrounded by family and friends. Like many life milestones, it prompted some important conversations about their future together, including what would happen if something unexpected occurred.

In this post, he shares his experience with estate planning as a newlywed, and the process of creating wills and powers of attorney (POAs) for the first time. I hope his perspective resonates with others who may be starting their own journeys into adulthood, partnership, and planning ahead.

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I went through the process of estate planning earlier this year, culminating in the signing of wills and POAs for myself and my partner. We are both in our early 30s.

We knew that wills and POAs were important, however estate planning felt like something that could be put off to a future date. Something to think about when we’re older, when we have more assets, or if we decided to have children.

It seems many Canadians our age (18-34 years old) feel the same way with reports that only 30% of people in this age group have a will and only 21% have a POA for themselves. https://www.rbcwealthmanagement.com/en-ca/insights/estate-planning-report-reveals-many-canadians-are-not-prepared

We began the process of estate planning after deciding to get married. Before starting the next phase of our lives together, we wanted to document our wishes if the unexpected were to occur.

The process of creating our wills / POAs was an opportunity to ask some important questions:

• What are our assets / liabilities?
• What is our financial situation if one of us passes away or is incapacitated?
• Who would we like as beneficiaries / executors?
• Do we have specific preferences for medical and personal care?
• Do we have specific funeral / burial plans?

We hadn’t considered these questions in detail up until this point.

For us, it was especially valuable to think about our financial situation if one of us were to pass away. Would we be protected and able to pay our mortgage and other liabilities? Do we each know the details of the other’s accounts—like pension plans, life insurance policies, and bank information?

I think these questions are beneficial to ask for a lot of people in our age group, especially those early in their careers that rely on dual incomes and / or have dependants.

Working with an estate planning professional helped us to start thinking through these important questions that were needed to draft our wills and POAs, and they brought up several different scenarios that we hadn’t considered previously such as including provisions for future children.

It feels good to know that we now have our wishes reflected in our wills and POAs, including care provisions in our wills for our beloved pets, the closest things we currently have to children.

My advice to anyone without a will and POAs is to start thinking about these questions and then reach out to an estate planning professional to get started. Getting started may be the most difficult part.

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As an estates law clerk, I’ve seen firsthand how valuable it is to have these documents in place—regardless of age or asset level. I’m proud of my son and his partner for taking this step early in their marriage, and I hope their story encourages others to do the same.

Thanks for reading. Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend surrounded by family, friends, and peace of mind.