Today’s blog is dual purpose.

Purpose #1 is to give kudos to all of you receiving this that have completed your estate plan.

Purpose #2 is to show you a real world example of what happens if you don’t have an estate plan.

Here we go!

I was doing an estate plan signing with a client last week when they mentioned something in passing that caught my attention.

“I died about a year ago.”

Not “I almost died.”

“I died.”

That definitely got my attention.

“I was out playing golf. I was on the 6th hole. Boom – cardiac arrest. I literally dropped dead right there.”

The client went on to explain the difference between a heart attack and cardiac arrest – a heart attack usually comes on gradually; a cardiac arrest comes on all at once.

“When cardiac arrest happens you basically have 5 minutes to take action or the person is gone forever,” they said.

“Lucky for me the groundcrew had a defibrillator and knew CPR. They saved me.”

“Thing is,” they went on to say, “I was incredibly lucky. First, I was healthy and had no idea something like this might happen. Second, if I was out hiking or basically doing anything other than exactly what I was doing, I wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s what got me in your office – I could see the mess it could make if I didn’t have everything organized – so I put it at the top of my priority list.”

The point?

We never know what life is going to throw at us.

In my opinion that shouldn’t make you anxious – it is, in many ways, out of our control.

But it should drive you to prepare for rough patches, because for almost all of us they are inevitable.

Don’t wait for something to shock you (pun intended – had to lighten it up a little, right?!) into taking action.

Estate planning isn’t hard to do (we make it SUPER easy for you).

What’s hard is prioritizing it over all of the urgent things constantly popping up in your world.

Carve out some time and get it done.

You’ll be grateful you did when life’s unexpected twists and turns happen.

Cheers,

Christopher Small
CMS Law Firm LLC

PS – don’t keep this estate planning stuff to yourself – you know it’s important and we LOVE referrals!