End-of-life planning matters because it decides who makes the calls when you can't, and who receives what you have built when you are gone. Without a plan, the law decides both, and the law does not know your family.
It is not a morbid subject. It is a practical one, and most of it is about living rather than dying.
What end-of-life planning actually covers
When people hear the phrase, they think of funerals. The funeral is the smallest part. A proper plan covers four things:
- Who looks after your affairs if you lose capacity. An illness, a stroke or an accident can leave you unable to make decisions for a week, a year or for good. A lasting power of attorney names the people you trust to act for you.
- Who inherits, and how. A will sets out who receives your estate, who deals with it, and who would look after children under 18.
- What it costs your family. Inheritance tax, and the delay and expense of sorting out an estate with no instructions, both fall on the people you leave behind.
- What you want. Your wishes about care, treatment and your funeral, written down so nobody has to guess.
Why people put it off
The usual reasons are honest ones. It feels too early. It feels like tempting fate. It feels expensive, or complicated, or like a conversation nobody wants to start.
None of those reasons changes what happens if nothing is in place. In England and Wales:
- Your family has no automatic right to make decisions for you if you lose capacity, not even your husband, wife or civil partner. Without a lasting power of attorney, they may need to apply to the Court of Protection to become your deputy, which is slower and more expensive than having made one.
- Without a will, the intestacy rules decide who inherits. An unmarried partner receives nothing under those rules, however long you have been together.
- Nobody is appointed to look after your children unless you name a guardian in your will.
It gets easier once you start
The first conversation is the hardest. After that, it becomes a list of decisions, each of which you can take in your own time. Most people find the relief is greater than they expected: the decisions are made, written down, and nobody will have to work them out at the worst possible moment.
Over the next 29 days, this challenge takes those decisions one at a time.