Holistic Approach to Estate Planning

Melissa Street has published her comment, A holistic approach to estate planning:paramount in protecting your family, your wealth, and your legacy in 7Pepp. Disp. Resol. L.J. 141 (2007).

Here is the conclusion:

“Discourage Litigation; PersuadeYour Neighbors to Compromise Whenever You Can; Point Out to Them how theNominal Winner is Often a Real Loser – in Fees, Expenses, and Waste of Time”Abraham Lincoln was perhaps one of the earliest advocates of mediation when hewrote those lines. When testators are planning for their deaths, the words ofAbraham Lincoln should ring loud. The first concern of testators is thehappiness of their loved ones. Unfortunately, however much testators may lovesomeone, they may not know how to transfer their wealth in a means that willprevent conflicts. As a consequence, instead of making someone’s life better,testators instead create grief for their loved ones, such as an estrangedrelationship with a sibling, feelings of being unloved by the testator, and legalfees from years of litigation. When testators imagine their death, theytypically think of how their loved ones will remember them. The last thingtestators want to imagine is their family members cursing their name long afterthey are gone. Holistic estate planning employs the techniques of mediation toensure that testators are successful in passing on a positive legacy that willlast for generations. A family business, divorce and remarriage, an adult childas trustee, and large real estate holdings are areas in which testators are atparticular risk if they do not share their estate plans with their families andconsider conflicting views. There are a few options available to testators whowant to keep their family out of court; namely, mediation of probate matters,mediation provisions in the will, ante-mortem probate statutes, and revocableliving trusts. Unfortunately, all these fall short in some way or another.Holistic estate planning alone is paramount in protecting your family, yourwealth, and your legacy.