December 2002

Dear Mike: We have talked about doing our estate planning, off and on, for the last ten years or so. Of course, we knew our situation had changed from the time we did our old will. Our kids have grown up and left. Our old will still names guardians for our children and now they have children of their own. Our farm has changed, the economics have changed, the plan for our future has changed, but we still have our old will. I don’t know why, but for whatever reason, we always put it off. Now, we just came from the doctor and my husband has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I suppose it’s too late to do anything for us, isn’t it? - Worried and Sick.

Dear Worried: I think a lot of people put off doing their estate planning because of the ever changing environ of life they live in. One day your kids are happily married, the next they have news of a possible divorce. One year, your farm looks like it’s going to make a million dollars, the next year you spent that million plus a few thousand more.

How does one ever set up a plan that will stand up to the test of time?

You don’t. You can’t expect your legal documents to be comprehensive enough to handle everything and anything that is going to change in years to come.

None of us has a guaranteed long-term lease on life. You could be one of those people who is sick and needing daily care and yet, live to be a hundred and ten, or you could be one of those people who’s the picture of health and drops over dead in a second when the right blood vessel suddenly says ‘that’s enough’ and clogs up or ruptures. A person just never knows what’s around the next bend in life. You have to be prepared for whatever.

Being prepared doesn’t mean I write up a will and then stuff it into the safe until it’s needed. It’s being pro-active in your planning and your business and part of being pro-active is keeping your farm estate plan up to date. Smart estate planning is when you take the circumstances you have today and make the best plan you possibly can for today’s situation. But, much more importantly, you need to be able to keep this plan close at hand so when situations change, economics change, the family changes or whatever happens, you have the ability to go in and talk to someone and reflect that change in your plan.

People today can’t afford to have the mindset of estate planning is a one time thing. With as fast as things change today, everyone needs to understand that farm estate planning is just something that you need to do, the same as changing the oil in the car, rotating the tires, planning the crops for the coming year, seeing the doctor for your annual physical, etc., etc. etc.

I can’t tell you how many people come into my office after it’s too darn late to do anything. ‘Gee, Dad died and he always said that when he died that I would take over the farm, or he was going to change this to read this way..., or Mom was going to set this up so I could..’ and on and on and on. Well, guess what? That situation you always thought you had the time to do something about just expired yesterday. Every one of those people who had the opportunity to set wrong things to right, save their family tens of thousands of dollars, keep children from tearing each other apart after the reading of the will, or losing the family business you spent generations building and now, passed on that opportunity and it’s gone forever. Forever!
Was it because these people were lazy, stupid or just plain complacent, I don’t know. What I do know is their lack of planning will have incredibly negative and terrible consequences for their spouses, for their children and for their children’s children for generations to come just because they didn’t get the job done.

Estate planning is in the top three most important things you will do in your life, right up there besides ‘who are you going to marry’ and ‘what are you going to do with your life as an occupation’. Those three things will have more impact on your time spent on this planet than anything else you can think of, and making any one of these less important than that in any of these categories is going to lead to disaster of equal proportions.
My clients come in a minimum of every two years and I don’t care if they sit here for half and hour and tell me that nothing has changed of any consequence for those two years. They are going to come in because it’s that important to stay on top of. If you don’t want to take the time to do farm estate planning, then hire someone who will make you do it.

You, Worried, have been given time to rectify and repair a bad estate plan, and although the other news is all bad, thank God that you are now given the time to do things right. There are so many things that can be done to save money, help spouses and children do the right things at the right times, save the family farm, and save your family from so many different problems and now you have the time to get that done. Talk to a farm estate planner now, the best estate planner you can find, and we’ll make sure you have the perfect plan before you run out of that most precious commodity of all, time.

(Editor's Note: If you have any comments or questions for Mr. Baron, he may be reached at Great Plains Diversified Services, 1424 W. Century Ave., Bismarck, North Dakota or telephone 1-800-373-4078 or you may email him at: mbaron@btigate.com)Copyright Farm And Livestock Directory, All Rights Reserved