Generation to Generation

I have lost count of all the women in my life reading “Strangers – A Memoir of Marriage” by Belle Burden. Burden’s story of the arc, from beginning to end, of her marriage to “James” is heartbreaking, cautionary, and triumphant all at the same time. I picked it up because my book club selected it; most others have been motivated by friends or BookTok influencers who say it’s a must-read for anyone who is married or intending to marry. This word-of-mouth endorsement can be credited to Burden’s willingness to pinpoint where she could have protected herself better – not emotionally, but legally and financially – from the possibility that her marriage to James might end.

If you already understand what a typical estate plan looks like, you can skip to the next paragraph. Put simply, it is more than just a will. Instead, a typical estate plan contains four documents: a will, revocable trust, health care proxy and power of attorney. The health care proxy and power of attorney are designed to operate during your lifetime, while the will and revocable trust control how your property is dealt with after your death. The will tends to be a relatively simple document by which you give away your personal belongings and name the personal representatives who are to administer your estate. The trust, on the other hand, distributes the balance of your assets among the people (and charities) you care about and names the trustees who will administer the trust property according to your wishes. The trust is necessarily more complex than the will, because it is where the tax planning provisions are found.