A very interesting article in the Business Section of the New York Times on Saturday, July 25th. On-Line in “Wealth Matters” the article is entitled, “Need Help With Your Estate Plan? Go With The Flow, Advisors Say.”
“As older adults face mortality during the pandemic, lawyers and wealth advisers are using color-coded documents and flowcharts to help them understand estate planning.” Andrew D. Hendry, vice chairman and general counsel for Colgate-Palmolive understood complicated legal documents. “But when it came to his estate plan, Mr. Hendry, like many others, was not terribly interested in digging through hundreds of pages of legal documents….He found comfort in what his wealth adviser had created: a series of color-coded documents that laid out exactly who got what, when and why….‘I’m a lawyer, and I understand estate planning documents have to be pretty heavy for the estate plan to work. But they’re really not useful to make a decision….’ ‘More people are looking to review their estate plans if something happens, but it’s hard to keep track of everything without a schedule like this,’ said John J. Voltaggio, a managing wealth adviser at Northern Trust who creates color-coded charts and simple spreadsheets for his clients, including Mr. Hendry. ‘We have that on one page. And then we can ask, ‘Should we update any of it?’”
To read the full article, click here.