Plan for a Wonderful LIfe

In the real world, we don’t get the chance to see firsthand what our world would be like without us. In the movies, though, anything is possible. In 1946, It’s a Wonderful Life showed how that might feel. Early in the movie, we see George Bailey as a 12-year-old boy rescue his younger brother, Harry, from drowning. We watch as the young boy is brave enough to stop his pharmacist boss from accidentally filling a customer’s prescription with poison. Then the movie jumps to his present timeline where life for George, as an adult, doesn’t work out the way he planned.

Things start to fall apart for George, or at least it seems so to him, when his father dies suddenly. True to form, George sacrificed his big plans to take over the family business, a savings and loan company, to keep it from being shut down. He wanted to travel the world, but that would have to wait. No good deed goes unpunished, and George was certainly punished for making this sacrifice. Under his watch, there was a frantic run on the bank. 

He and his brand-new wife, Mary, gave up their honeymoon savings to satisfy all the bank’s customers and salvage the business. But never catching a break, soon after George’s family business was saved, it faced an even bigger threat. As a result of an innocent mistake that had nothing to do with George, an audit by a bank examiner threatened to ruin him on Christmas Eve.

Bearing a level of stress that would crush almost anyone, George lashed out at his family, got drunk at a bar, and found his way to a nearby bridge planning to end his life. He prayed for help but at the same time wished he’d never been born, and then he prepared to jump. Before he could, though, his guardian angel, Clarence, threw him a curveball and jumped into the freezing river himself. As he had done all his life, George couldn’t help but save the “man” in need. In exchange, Clarence granted George’s wish and showed him a world in which he never existed.

It was not a pleasant world. Without George, his town fell apart. His family fell apart. George’s brother was dead because George wasn’t there to save him. His pharmacist boss was in prison because no one was there to prevent his costly mistake. His wife was a lonely spinster. His father’s family business failed. It did not take long for George to realize that, as bad as things seemed at the time, they would have been much worse without him. 

After George realized how important he was to his family and his town, he begged for his old life back, and Clarence had the power to give it to him. Upon his return, he was brought to tears when he saw how his family and friends rallied to save him in his time of need just as he had done for others so many times.

You and I won’t get the same opportunity George had, to observe as an outsider what our world would be like without us. But it’s still our duty, as prudent leaders of our families, to think about a future that does not include us and to make plans so that future is as good as it can be for those we will leave behind.

As an estate planning attorney, I cannot guarantee that everything will be perfect for those you leave behind. I can, though, help you avoid certain pitfalls that would make things worse for them. One of the worst things you can do is nothing. With no plan at all, you are setting your family up for a long, stressful, and expensive probate court process. My top priority for every client is probate court avoidance.

Beyond the basic, underlying goal of avoiding probate, though, there are many other things we can do with an estate plan to increase the probability of a better future for the next generation. Whether we’re focused on minimizing taxes, sheltering assets from creditors and marriage troubles, protecting children from their own poor money-management decisions, or all of the above, the estate planning process allows us to set up your heirs for the best future possible after you’re gone. 

You won’t get a glimpse of the world as it will be after you’re gone, but you don’t have to try to plan for it blindly. ν