National Preparedness Month Forgot the Estate Plan Again

September does something funny to a to-do list. Suddenly you’re packing backpacks, blocking fall calendars, and somehow already half-planning the holidays while it’s still warm out. We’re excellent at getting ready for the next busy season.

National Preparedness Month sits on that same calendar. So I asked the Trust & Will Financial Advisor Contributor Panel a simple question: What’s the one “preparedness” piece people most often forget—and what story or pattern made you start bringing it up with clients?

They didn’t talk about emergency kits. They talked about the paperwork that keeps a household moving when someone can’t act for themselves.

The Will Checkbox

Lisa White Burns, Founder and Financial Wellness Coach at Her Path, LLC, keeps meeting clients who treat a will like the finish line. In their heads, estate planning is about what happens after they’re gone. Lisa’s more interested in the messy middle—when you’re still here, but you can’t handle the bills, the accounts, or the institutions that refuse to accept “my spouse usually handles that” as a login.

“A pattern I often see is that people tend to think estate planning is about what happens when they die,” Lisa said. “So, if they have a will, they feel like they’ve checked the box. But preparedness isn’t just about planning for your death. It’s also about planning for the possibility that you’re still here but temporarily or permanently unable to handle things on your own.”

That’s why she pushes the conversation toward a Financial Power of Attorney, and toward naming someone trusted enough to serve as agent—not someday, on purpose.

Bob Chitrathorn, CFP®, CPFA®, Co-Founder and CFO of Simplified Wealth Management, lands on the same document with a blunter question. After enough meetings about retirement, investments, and aging parents, he started asking: If something happened tomorrow and you couldn’t handle any of this yourself, who could legally step in?

“A lot of people could name the person immediately,” Bob said. “Far fewer had actually given that person the legal authority to act.”

His line that stuck with me (and hopefully it will stick with you too): “Having someone you trust is not the same as empowering them to help you.”

Who Can Speak For You

David Wright Jr., Managing Principal of WrightWay Legacy Services, hears something different. Families usually know who they’d trust with medical decisions. They just haven’t put it in writing.

The overlooked piece, in his experience, is the healthcare power of attorney and the related directive. He sees it with spouses and adult children mid-crisis, arguing over who can actually speak for someone. The 18-and-leaving-for-school version of this is the move-in day conversation.

David keeps it to three questions: What would you want to happen? Who do you trust to act on your behalf? Have you documented those decisions so that person can step in when needed?

“An emergency is not the ideal time for a family to begin figuring out the answers to those questions,” David said.

Where Does Everything Live?

Legal authority is only half the problem. The other half is access.

On the September Contributor Panel call, Al Faber, CFP®, Founder of DIWY Financial Planning, zoomed in on a quieter document: a non-legal letter of instruction. Where the recurring financial logins live. Whether a spouse actually has the two-factor codes. The boring, practical map that turns a power of attorney into something someone can use at 11pm—because the document itself doesn’t come with directions to your password manager.

Ryan L. Goldschmitt, WMCP, Founder and Managing Director of Geminus Wealth Partners, takes it one step further: build a family file. Estate plan documents, media, passwords—one place, not three drawers and a half-remembered login.

If you’ve ever hunted for a school form the night before it was due, you already understand the point.

What If “Eventually” Never Comes?

Matthew Veland, Financial Planner with Prudential Advisors, still gets surprised by how often a will itself is missing. People typically figure they’ll get to it eventually...

“What if eventually never comes?” he asked. “Would you want a stranger making decisions about your money and your family?”

He has a story he shares when clients sit on the fence. A client’s father passed without an estate plan while the mother’s Alzheimer’s was getting worse. The client, serving as executor, spent more than two years waiting for everything to clear probate. That’s the version of “we’ll deal with it later” Matthew doesn’t want families to live through.

On our September call, he also flagged Payable on Death designations on bank accounts. He advises to other advisors, this is worth checking at client intake and in ongoing planning—because those beneficiary forms can quietly conflict with what a will or trust is trying to do.

Design Beats Default

Bob’s frame is the one I’d bring into a client meeting tomorrow: “Preparedness isn’t just asking, ‘What do I need if something goes wrong?’ It’s asking, ‘Who can act for me if I can’t, and have I put that authority in writing?’”

We’re already good at preparing for school, for the holidays, for the seasons we can see coming. Make the estate plan part of that same habit—so the person you trust can actually keep life moving. Trust & Will is the best place to start.

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