What Advisors Would Rename Make-A-Will Month

August arrives with a tidy little label attached to it: Make-A-Will Month. There's a banner-ready simplicity to it, one document, one deadline, one box to check. But sit across from a financial advisor long enough and you'll notice the will is rarely the part of the plan that keeps them up at night.

So we asked the Trust & Will Financial Advisor Contributor Panel a different question: if you had to rename this month after the estate planning concept that actually deserves the spotlight, what would you call it? Their answers had almost nothing to do with the will itself, and almost everything to do with what happens around it.

"Get Your Life In Order" Month

Al Faber, CFP®, Founder of DIWY Financial Planning, didn't reach for a new document at all. He reached for a season. August is when the garage gets cleaned out before the weather turns, when school supplies get bought, when routines reset. "While I'm doing that," he said, "let me get my life in order."

Chitra Patel, Founder and CEO of WealthWorth, sees the same window from a different angle. Most people mentally file the real turning point of the year as November, but she'd argue for August instead. "I think of August as the second half of the year," she said, noting that the back-to-school reset is exactly when clients are already thinking about what needs attention before the year gets away from them, estate planning included.

Neither of them renamed the month after a document. They renamed it after a moment, the one where life is already asking you to take stock, and estate planning simply belongs on that list.

"Life Event" Month

Julie Gawarecki has a habit of asking clients a simple question at her estate planning events: what life event happened in your family this year? The room usually goes quiet. "They don't think of one of their sons or daughters getting married, or getting a new grandchild, or a divorce in the family," she said. The instinct is to treat a life event as something singular and final. "A life event just isn't death."

That blind spot has a second layer to it. Julie has spent over two decades watching couples plan together, and she tells them plainly that the plan they sign today is not the last version. "One of you is gone, we're going to be doing this all over again with whoever's left." The document is never really finished. It's revisited every time life changes shape, a wedding, a birth, a new address, and Julie's pick for the month, Life Event Month, is built entirely around getting families to notice those moments before a survey or a scare forces the issue.

"Who Has The Keys" Month

Ryan Goldschmitt, WMCP, founder of Geminus Wealth Partners, sees a different gap. A will tells the people you love what you want. It doesn't always tell them how to act on it. "I have watched clean documents sit untouched because the people named did not know what they were allowed to do, or when their authority even started," he said.

In his experience, most clients can't say when a power of attorney or healthcare proxy actually takes effect, so he walks each plan apart piece by piece. Who steps in? When does that begin? What can they do? Can they reach it when it matters. If the answer to any of those is no, he wants the client to hear it from him first. As Ryan put it, "Signing the will is the easy part. Handing over the keys is the harder one."

That's his rename: Who Has The Keys Month. Not because the will is wrong, but because a plan nobody can access isn't a plan at all.

It's the exact problem Trust & Will's AI Estate Assistant was built to solve: upload a client's existing documents and see, in plain language, who's named, what they're authorized to do, and when that authority actually starts, instead of asking a client to reread legal language they signed years ago.

"Plan Today, Protect Tomorrow" Month

Bob Chitrathorn, CFP®, CPFA®, Co-Founder & CFO of Simplified Wealth Management, sees the same disconnect show up in the details clients assume are settled. Beneficiary designations that haven't been touched in years. A power of attorney naming someone who's no longer the right fit. Passwords and account access known to exactly one person in the family.

"The pattern I see most often is that people believe they are done because they signed a will years ago," Bob said. But a will signed once and never revisited can quietly drift out of sync with the rest of a person's life. "The real value of estate planning is not simply deciding who receives what," he added. "It is creating clarity before your loved ones are forced to make difficult decisions under pressure."

His pick, Plan Today, Protect Tomorrow Month, treats the will as one piece of a plan that has to stay current to actually work. "A thoughtful, current plan protects more than assets," he said. "It protects time, relationships, privacy, and peace of mind."

"Protect Your Legacy" Month

David Wright Jr., Managing Principal of WrightWay Legacy Services, took the question in a broader direction. To him, the will is a single instrument standing in for a much larger idea: legacy. "Protecting your legacy goes beyond deciding who receives your assets," he said. "It also includes documenting your wishes, planning for potential incapacity, appointing trusted decision-makers, organizing important information, and creating a clear plan that helps your loved ones navigate life's most difficult situations with confidence."

For David, the payoff of that broader framing is what it spares a family from. "Instead of leaving loved ones to guess what you would have wanted or disagree about your wishes, you've already documented your decisions and provided clear guidance," he said. Everyone, he believes, has a legacy worth protecting, whether that means significant assets, a growing family, or simply the wish to have their choices honored. That's the case for Protect Your Legacy Month: it makes room for the whole conversation, not just the paperwork at the center of it.

"Beyond The Will" Month

Lisa Burns, out on the East Coast, kept returning to a scenario that rarely makes it into estate planning conversations: what happens if something happens to you and you're still here. Not gone. Just suddenly unable to make your own decisions.

She'd know. Not long ago, her mother, who has Parkinson's, ended up in the hospital. It was, in Lisa's words, "a very emotional, stressful situation." What kept the rest of life from unraveling alongside it was a document signed long before anyone needed it. "Thank goodness she had her estate docs done, power of attorney, which was me, so I could just keep the ball rolling and do all the business stuff that had to be done while I was still very concerned about her."

That's the piece Lisa thinks deserves the month: not what happens after you're gone, but who's legally able to step in while you're still very much here. "We spend so much time on the document about when we're gone," she said, "and not enough focus on what if something should happen and we're still here." For the people she works with most, especially women who are single or on their own, that question isn't hypothetical. It's the whole plan.

Five advisors, five different answers, and not one of them landed on the will. What they landed on, instead, was everything the will was never built to carry alone: the timing that gets a plan started, the life events that mean it isn't finished, the access that lets someone act, the upkeep that keeps it true, the legacy it's meant to protect, and the person who's still here and needs help. August may be nearly over, but the theme it was supposed to spotlight doesn't come with an expiration date. Call it whatever you want. Just don't call it done.

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