Most of us fear death – a lot. That’s one of the reasons we don’t talk about it much until the subject becomes unavoidable – which occurs because someone is terminally ill or a life has been taken in an accident.
My own experience following the death of someone close to me leads me to believe there is a common wish among many people in that circumstance: a wish for more time, deeper conversations and greater insight into what made the deceased person who they were and why they held the place in the world they did.
So, why does it take someone’s death for us to want to know them better?
And, more important, what can we do to improve the likelihood of doing so? You will find answers to both of these questions (and many more related to the conversation) in a new book, Willing Wisdom: Seven Questions to Ask Before You Die, by Tom Deans. Deans is a speaker and the author of Every Family’s Business: 12 Common Sense Questions to Protect Your Wealth.
This time around, there are only seven questions; yet, the discussion is actually a broader one because it affects everyone, not just family-business owners. This book is, as the name suggests, about wills – those testamentary documents that can either bring families together or tear them apart. And, lest you fear it is another dry, technical treatise on the design of a legal document, let me assure you it is not. Willing Wisdom is much more about family relations than about estate distribution.
The book’s setting is Las Vegas, where three professional speakers who will be presenting speeches at a convention meet for drinks and dinner. They are Ashley, a psychotherapist; Stephen, an estate-planning lawyer; and William, an intergenerational wealth-transfer expert. (This last character is a very thinly disguised surrogate for the book’s author, and he, of course, has the lead role, which he plays with great passion.)
The fuel for that passion comes from William’s experience in seeing hard-earned wealth unnecessarily destroyed and families irreconcilably torn apart by someone dying intestate or, worse, keeping the terms of their will secret until it is read by the estate’s executor.
The urgent need, in William’s mind, is to publicize the carnage that can occur as a result of the fact that more than 50% of us die without a will and, among the wills that are in place, most are outdated.
More damaging, however, is the secrecy that typically surrounds the distribution of the deceased person’s assets. In most families, beneficiaries do not know precisely what their, or anyone else’s, personal entitlement will be until the will is read with all the family gathered around.
The potential for conflict is enormous, as family members try to reconcile the proportionate distributions. Why did Mary get more than me? Why didn’t I get more after caring for Dad in the final 10 years of his life? Why should Johnny get anything; isn’t he a drug addict who is just going to waste it all? Why so much to charity rather than the family?
The real answers to all these questions, of course, rest with the person who can no longer provide them – the deceased.
And even if someone in the family has been designated as the executor and knew the contents of the will in advance, they normally are better equipped to explain the “what” of the distributions than the “why.”
William, through the example of his own family, suggests an alternative to this all too common scenario: a family meeting on a regular basis – at which everyone is asked to answer seven important questions. There are no right or wrong answers, and the questions are not designed to control what anyone might do with their inheritance, regardless of the size of it. Rather, the seven questions are designed to open minds to the possibilities of what the beneficiaries could do with whatever they receive.
Not surprising, there is considerable debate in the book among Stephen the lawyer, Ashley the psychotherapist and William regarding whether or not families would actually agree to participate in such a meeting. The book’s characters acknowledge that the entire topic of death is often so carefully avoided.
Through the discussion, William gradually reveals the seven questions and, by the end of the book, both Ashley and Stephen pledge to join in William’s cause in educating the world on the importance of communicating people’s greatest hopes and noblest ambitions through their will. William, as you might guess, commits to writing a book on the subject.
So, we come full circle. This is a book about writing a book. But, of course, it is much more than that. It is a passionately told story designed to bring an all too often forbidden topic to the forefront of discussion within families.
I purposely did not list the seven questions because I feel I could not do justice to the conversation around each in the space permitted. And I want you to read the book.
The author makes considerable reference in the book to the role that financial advisors can play in this process, noting that we frequently are the most qualified to initiate and, perhaps, even lead such discussions among our clients.
An opportunity awaits.
Willing Wisdom: Seven Questions to Ask Before You Die
by Tom Deans,
sales@willingwisdom.com; 144 pages,
$22.95
****
© 2013 Investment Executive. All rights reserved.