You’re Under 40. Do You Really Need an Estate Plan?

You probably don’t wake up at 32 thinking, I really need to work on my estate plan today.

You’re thinking about the mortgage. Daycare. The next promotion. Whether you should finally increase your retirement contribution. Maybe you’re getting married, buying your first home, starting a business, or wondering how one small child somehow requires this much stuff.

Estate planning can feel like something for a much later version of you.

But somewhere between your first real paycheck and the life you have now, something changed.

There may be a house. A spouse or partner. A child. Retirement savings. Life insurance. A dog that absolutely counts as a family member. Digital accounts containing years of your life. Bills that need to be paid. People who depend on you.

And that is exactly when estate planning starts becoming less about how old you are and more about how much of a life you have built.

WHAT ARE YOU ACTUALLY PLANNING FOR BEFORE 40?

Estate planning is often discussed as though its primary purpose is deciding who gets your property after you die.

That is certainly part of it. But for a younger adult, some of the more immediate questions may have nothing to do with death.

Who could handle financial matters if you were temporarily unable to? Who would make healthcare decisions if you could not make them yourself? What happens to the home you just bought? Who would care for your children? Are the beneficiaries on accounts you opened years ago still the people you would choose today?

Michigan recognizes several planning tools that can address different pieces of those questions, including wills, trusts, financial powers of attorney, and healthcare directives.

The goal is not to collect documents because adulthood says you are supposed to have them.

It is to make sure someone could step into the life you have built without having to guess what you wanted.

YOU BOUGHT A HOME. WHAT CHANGED?

For many younger professionals, buying a first home is one of the first moments when estate planning begins to feel less theoretical.

Suddenly there is a significant piece of property attached to your name.

That creates practical questions. How is the property titled? If you own it with someone else, what does that ownership arrangement mean if one of you dies? If you own it alone, who would receive it? If there is a mortgage, how would that obligation fit into the larger picture?

The answer is not simply “put the house in a will.” Property can pass in different ways depending on how it is owned and what planning arrangements are in place.

The important part is recognizing that buying the house did more than change your address.

It gave your estate plan something significant to account for.

WHO COULD HANDLE THINGS IF YOU COULDN’T?

By your 30s, your financial life may be considerably more complicated than it was a decade earlier.

There may be checking and savings accounts, retirement investments, insurance, a mortgage, student loans, investment accounts, recurring bills, or even a business interest.

You manage those things almost automatically because they are yours.

But who could manage them if you suddenly could not?

A financial power of attorney can authorize another person to act for you in specified financial and property matters. Michigan’s Uniform Power of Attorney Act, effective July 1, 2024, provides the current statutory framework for these arrangements.

That does not mean giving someone control over your life today. It means thinking ahead about who you trust to act if there comes a time when you cannot.

YOU GOT MARRIED. DOES THAT MEAN EVERYTHING IS TAKEN CARE OF?

Marriage changes important legal rights. It does not eliminate the need to make decisions.

A spouse may be an important part of an estate plan, but marriage itself does not answer every question about how your affairs should be handled.

Who should make financial decisions if you become incapacitated? Are your retirement and life-insurance beneficiary designations current? How is your home owned? What if both spouses die unexpectedly? If one or both of you have children, how should property ultimately be managed and distributed?

And as life changes, documents created before marriage may no longer reflect the family that exists today.

The milestone itself can therefore serve as a useful reminder:

YOU HAD A CHILD. NOW WHO DEPENDS ON YOUR PLAN?

A new child changes the estate planning conversation in a way few other milestones do.

You are no longer planning only for yourself.

One of the most important questions becomes who should care for your child if both parents are gone. Michigan notes that a will may be used to nominate a guardian for minor children.

But guardianship is only one piece.

There is also the question of how money and property should be managed for a child who is too young to manage it independently. Life insurance and retirement beneficiaries may need another look. Parents may need to consider who should manage assets and how those assets should be available for their children’s needs.

You may not think of yourself as wealthy.

Your child probably does not care about your net worth either.

They depend on you. Those alone changes what there is to plan for.

WHO WOULD MAKE MEDICAL DECISIONS FOR YOU?

Estate planning before 40 is not only about property.

An accident or serious illness can create questions about who has authority to speak for you if you cannot communicate your own healthcare decisions.

Michigan allows an adult to choose a patient advocate through a healthcare power of attorney. The patient advocate can make healthcare decisions under the circumstances specified by Michigan law and the designation.

This is one reason age can be a misleading way to think about planning.

You do not need to expect something bad to happen in order to decide who you would trust if it did.

WHAT ABOUT THE LIFE YOU’VE BUILT ONLINE?

Twenty years ago, a discussion about estate planning might have centered largely on homes, bank accounts, investments, and physical belongings.

Your life today may exist in dozens of other places.

Personal photographs may live in cloud storage. Important information may be inside email accounts. There may be social media profiles, websites, online businesses, subscriptions, digital financial accounts, cryptocurrency, or other digital property.

Even something as simple as a phone can contain an extraordinary amount of a person’s personal and financial life.

That makes digital assets and access another consideration when thinking about what someone would need to manage if you were gone or unable to handle things yourself.

SHOULD YOUR ESTATE PLAN CHANGE AS YOUR LIFE CHANGES?

Usually, the more useful way to think about estate planning is not as something you finish once.

It is something that should continue to reflect the life around it.

At 25, your biggest financial asset may have been your retirement account at your first serious job.

By 30, there may be a spouse or partner and a home.

By 35, there may be children, more savings, life insurance, investments, a different house, a business, or people who now depend on your income.

By 40, the life represented by an estate plan may look very different from the one you had when you signed your first documents.

Marriage, divorce, a birth or adoption, buying or selling property, significant financial changes, starting a business, or the death of someone named in your existing plan can all be reasons to review what you have in place.

The point is not to keep creating more paperwork. It is to keep the paperwork connected to your actual life.

PLAN FOR THE LIFE YOU HAVE NOW.

At 25, there may not have been much to coordinate.

Then life got bigger.

A house. A career. A spouse or partner. Children. Retirement savings. Insurance. Investments. Pets. Passwords. Bills. Plans for next year and people counting on you tomorrow morning.

That is what changed.

Estate planning before 40 is not about acting older than you are. It is about recognizing how much of an adult life you have already built and deciding what should happen if, for any reason, you cannot be the person managing all of it.

Estate Planning & Elder Law Services, P.C. can help you look at where you are now, what has changed, and which planning tools make sense for your life under Michigan law.

Your life doesn’t have to be finished before it is worth planning for. Call (888) PLAN-050 or email info@formyplan.com to start the conversation.