Don't Hide the Baklava From Your Estate Planning Attorney

Yesterday, I went to my annual physical. My doctor asked what I had eaten the day before. I dutifully recited the healthy highlights: eggs, watermelon, yogurt, and sweet potatoes.

What I somehow neglected to mention was the baklava I had eaten after dinner.

I really like my doctor. She was kind, thoughtful, and only doing her job. But when she gently suggested that the four slices of bread I'd eaten that day might have been a little carb-heavy, I decided introducing the baklava into the conversation would probably overwhelm everyone involved.

The encounter got me thinking about something I see all the time in estate planning. People leave things out. And it’s not because they're dishonest. Usually, it's because they're embarrassed or because the situation is complicated or because they assume a detail isn't important enough to mention.

But the things people are most tempted to leave out are often the things I most need to know - the estranged child, the adult child who struggles with addiction or impulsive spending, the “temporary” loan to a sibling that everyone in the family remembers differently, the beneficiary designation that still names an ex-spouse, the house that's still titled in Mom's name, even though she died thirteen years ago, the son who hasn't spoken to the family in a decade, and the daughter who has always been financially responsible for everyone else.

Families often present me with the estate planning equivalent of eggs and watermelon. Then, twenty minutes into the conversation, they might casually mention something that completely changes my estate planning recommendations.

“Oh, I forgot to mention that my husband has children from a previous marriage.”

“Actually, my son receives government benefits.”

“Well, my daughter and I own a vacation home together.”

“We've been separated for years, but we're still legally married.”

These details really matter. Estate planning isn't about creating the perfect set of documents for the idealized version of your life. It's about creating a plan that works for the life you're actually living. And real life is messy.

One of the greatest privileges of my work is that people trust me with some of the most vulnerable parts of their lives. They tell me about family conflicts, worries about aging parents, concerns about children, financial mistakes, and deeply held fears about what might happen after they're gone. The embarrassing, uncomfortable, or complicated details are often the very things that determine whether an estate plan succeeds or fails.

So if you're meeting with an estate planning attorney, resist the urge to edit your story. Because the more complete the picture, the better equipped your attorney is to build a plan that actually works for the people you love. I'm not judging anyone's baklava. I'm just trying to help you build an estate plan that actually works.