Article on Shifting Gears: Estate Planning for Today’s Emerging Adults
Whether known as Peter Pan syndrome, a perpetual pursuit of passion, or being 25 years old and living in your parent’s basement, the journey and life of an emerging adult is no longer a novelty, an aberration, or a generational crisis.
Emerging adulthood is an accepted, if not celebrated, part of our culture. Recall the popular televise show Friends and it group of attractive twentysomethings frolicking in a modern-day fountain of youth, as its theme song set up the emerging adult’s dilemma: “It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear/ When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month/ Or even your year.”
The fact that emerging adulthood can span more than a year, and in some cases a decade or more, is ne of the many challenges this cohort group has presented to The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) Fellows and other estate planning professionals.
What does emerging adulthood, once the exclusive purview of the offspring of the very rich, look like today? It is the phenomenon of 18- to 30-year-olds in a type of extended adolescence in which they explore love, work, travel, and other interests while gradually moving toward enduring commitments and life changes. These young people consider marriage, home, and children not as achievements to be pursued currently but as perils to be avoided for a time. They want them, but not now.
Initially identified as the “Postponed Generation,” this class of “nearly grown-ups” was introduced by this author almost 30 years ago in this magazine. The article, Estate Planning for the Postponed Generation, Prob. & Prop. (Sept./Oct 1989), co-authored with the late Jon Gallo, a nationally recognized trust and estate lawyer, addressed issues that these young people began presenting in the estate planning process.
Although the concept of emerging adulthood has become commonplace 30 years later, it remains a challenging period for all parties involved – parents, their young adults, and legal counsel. The good news is that estate planning lessons involving these maturing individuals have come of age.
Drawing upon decades of neuroscience research and a generation’s worth of firsthand experience, this update to the 1989 article provides a current snapshot of emerging adulthood. Estate planning counsel will also learn new ways to understand and work with this distinct clientele and help motivate its constituents on the path to emotional, social, and financial maturity.