A New Diagnosis Changes More Than Medicine: The Estate Planning Calls to Make Next

When you receive a serious medical diagnosis, your attention naturally turns toward your health. There are appointments to schedule, questions for your doctors, treatment options to consider, and decisions that may need to be made quickly.

Legal planning usually isn't at the top of that list, but it should still be part of the conversation.

A significant change in your health is one of those moments when it's worth looking at your estate plan with fresh eyes. Your will, trust, health care documents, financial arrangements, and the people you've chosen to help you should all reflect your current circumstances. If those documents were prepared years ago, there's a chance your life looks very different from the life you were planning for at the time.

A review can tell you where things stand and whether anything needs to be changed.

Start With the People Who May Need to Act for You

One of the first questions to consider is who would step in if you couldn't make or communicate an important decision yourself.

Your estate plan may include documents that give another person authority to make certain health care or financial decisions on your behalf. The person you've selected may have been the right choice when you created the documents. Years later, that person may have moved, become unavailable, or experienced changes in their own life that make the arrangement less practical.

Take some time to think about the people currently named in your documents:
- Would you still choose them today?
- Do they understand what you've asked them to do?
- Have your family circumstances changed since you signed the paperwork?

These are practical questions, and they're worth answering while you have the opportunity to make those decisions yourself.

The same review applies to the people you've selected to handle your estate or serve in other roles under your will or trust. Estate planning involves more than deciding who receives property; it also involves deciding who you trust to carry out your instructions when you can't do it personally.

Take Another Look at Your Will and Trust

A new diagnosis can also be a reason to revisit the documents that control what happens to your property.

Start by pulling out your current will and trust, if you have one. Look at the people you've named and the instructions you've established, then consider whether those decisions still reflect your family and financial circumstances.

Perhaps you've acquired property since the documents were prepared. Maybe you've sold an asset, received an inheritance, started a business, or accumulated additional investments. Your relationships may have changed as well. A marriage, divorce, death in the family, or the birth of a child can all affect the decisions you've made in an estate plan.

Even when none of those events have occurred, time itself can be a good reason to review an older plan – a review gives your attorney an opportunity to look at the plan as it exists today rather than relying on decisions made years ago.

Don't Forget the Assets Outside Your Will

Another important part of the review is looking at how your individual assets will actually transfer.

Some accounts have beneficiary designations that determine who receives the account after your death. Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and certain financial accounts can have their own beneficiary instructions.

Those designations should be reviewed alongside your will or trust.

This is an area where people can easily lose track of what they previously selected: an account may have been opened a decade ago, with a beneficiary named at the time, while the rest of the estate plan has been updated several times since then.

Real estate deserves attention, too. In Hawaii, property can represent a significant part of a family's estate, so how that property is owned and how it fits into the estate plan can have important consequences.

Gather information about your major assets and bring it with your current estate planning documents when you meet with your attorney to give the attorney a clearer picture of the plan as a whole.

Make the Review Part of the Process

A new diagnosis can put a lot of information in front of you at once. Your estate plan doesn't need to become another source of confusion.

- Gather your existing documents.
- Make a list of your major assets.
- Review the people you've named to act on your behalf.
- Check your beneficiary designations and consider whether your current will or trust still reflects your wishes.
- Then sit down with an estate planning attorney and go through the plan.

You may discover that your documents are current and your choices still make sense. You may find a few areas that need updating. You may also uncover an issue you hadn't considered before.

The review allows you to understand those issues and make informed decisions while you can.

Estate planning is an ongoing part of managing your legal affairs. Major changes in your life are natural points to revisit the plan and make sure it continues to reflect your circumstances. If you've recently received a significant diagnosis and haven't reviewed your estate plan in several years, contact HELP to schedule a consultation. We'll help you understand what your current documents do, where potential gaps may exist, and what should be addressed next.

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