Episode 81: What You Need to Know About Estate Planning at 30
Episode 81
Host: Jill Mastroianni
What You Need to Know About Estate Planning at 30
What estate planning documents does a healthy 30-year-old actually need?
In this episode of The Death Readiness Podcast, Jill answers a question from a young listener who wondered what someone her age should be doing about estate planning. Using stories from her own life, including the loss of several young friends, Jill explains why estate planning isn't just for retirees.
You'll learn why powers of attorney and healthcare advance directives may be more important than a Will when you're young, how the famous Nancy Cruzan case changed the conversation around end-of-life decision-making, and what a recent Michigan court decision means for pregnant individuals and advance directives. Most importantly, you'll learn why estate planning doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to start.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Why Young Adults Often Avoid Estate Planning. Most people in their twenties and thirties aren't ignoring estate planning because they're irresponsible. They're avoiding it because no one has ever explained it to them. Estate planning feels expensive, complicated, and irrelevant—until life proves otherwise.
The Four Core Estate Planning Documents. Jill explains the four foundational documents that make up a basic estate plan:
Last Will and Testament
Financial Power of Attorney
Healthcare Power of Attorney
Healthcare Advance Directive (Living Will)
She also shares which of these documents she actually had when she was thirty years old.
Why Powers of Attorney Matter More Than You Think. A financial power of attorney allows someone you trust to manage financial matters if you're unable to do so yourself. Jill explains the difference between immediate and springing powers of attorney and why she chose to put one in place long before she thought she would ever need it.
Bad Things Happen to Young People Too. Estate planning isn't just about death. Jill reflects on the loss of former teammates, friends, and family members whose lives changed unexpectedly due to illness, accidents, and catastrophic medical events. Those experiences taught her an important lesson: A tragedy may be unlikely, but it's never impossible.
What Nancy Cruzan Can Teach Us. Nancy Cruzan was only 25 years old when a car accident left her in a persistent vegetative state. Because she hadn't left clear instructions about her wishes, her family spent years in court, including a case before the United States Supreme Court, trying to answer one heartbreaking question: What would Nancy have wanted?
Michigan's New Advance Directive Ruling. A recent Michigan court decision struck down a state law that prevented patient advocates from carrying out certain end-of-life decisions for pregnant patients.
Jill explains:
What the law previously said
Why it was challenged
How the ruling affects Michigan residents
Why pregnancy-related restrictions on advance directives still exist in many states
This discussion also connects to the story of Adriana Smith, the Georgia nurse whose case sparked a national conversation about pregnancy and end-of-life decision-making.
Do You Need a Will at 30? Jill shares her own situation as a 30-year-old attorney: single, no children, two retirement accounts, a checking account, a house
She explains why she didn't have a Will at that stage of life and why beneficiary designations and account titling can sometimes accomplish much of what young adults need.
Estate Planning Isn't a Pass-Fail Test. One of the biggest mistakes people make is believing they need to do everything perfectly. Instead, Jill encourages listeners to think of estate planning as a series of small steps: Sign a healthcare power of attorney, complete an advance directive, create a financial power of attorney, add beneficiaries to accounts, organize key information for loved ones. Every step makes life easier for the people who may one day need to help you.
Resources & Links
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Nde4fFp5Hmk
The Death Readiness Playbook: https://www.deathreadiness.com/playbook
Important Information Sheets: https://www.deathreadiness.com/resources/important-information-sheets
Michigan statutory financial power of attorney form: https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2025/08/06/fillable-power-of-attorney-forms-now-available-on-department-of-attorney-general-website
Access state-specific Healthcare Power of Attorney forms: https://www.caringinfo.org/planning/advance-directives/by-state/
Episode 17: How Powers of Attorney Work, When to Use Them, and When It’s Too Late to Get One: https://www.deathreadiness.com/podcast/episode-17-how-powers-of-attorney-work-when-to-use-them-and-when-its-too-late-to-get-one
Episode 22: What Every Parent Needs to Know When Their Child Turns 18: https://www.deathreadiness.com/podcast/episode-22-what-every-parent-needs-to-know-when-their-child-turns-18
Episode 23: What Happens When a Pregnant Woman Is Declared Brain Dead?: https://www.deathreadiness.com/podcast/episode-23-what-happens-when-a-pregnant-woman-is-declared-brain-dead
Episode 68: Why Good Powers of Attorney Still Fail: https://www.deathreadiness.com/podcast/68
Connect with Jill:
· Website: DeathReadiness.com
· Email: jill@deathreadiness.com
· Learn more about Jill’s solutions
· Subscribe to the Death Readiness Dispatch!
· Ask a question for Tuesday Triage
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What estate planning documents did I have when I was thirty years old? Surprisingly, not many. In this episode, I share what I did have, what I didn't, and why the most important documents for young adults aren't usually the ones people think about. Plus, a recent Michigan court case that changed how healthcare advance directives work.
Welcome to The Death Readiness Podcast. This is not your dad’s estate planning podcast. I’m Jill Mastroianni — estate planning attorney, death readiness guide, and your translator for wills, trusts, probate, and the conversations most families avoid. If you’ve been wondering things like, ‘Can a trust protect what I leave to my children?’ ‘What happens if I give someone power of attorney over me?’ and ‘How can I help my parents while respecting their independence?’ You’re in the right place.
Sometimes I think one of the hardest things about being young is realizing how much you don't know.
At least that's how it felt to me.
I graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a degree in Russian language and literature. I was a hard worker, maybe even too hard of a worker. But no matter how hard I worked, I was constantly discovering entire categories of information that somehow everyone else seemed to know and I didn't.
Graduation weekend provided two excellent examples.
My parents and my brother came. So did my Aunt Eileen and Uncle Charlie. And it felt really special.
The day before graduation, I decided to check my Hinman Box one last time. A Hinman Box was basically Dartmouth's version of a campus post office box. I hadn't checked it in ages because I lived off campus with my dog and got most of my mail at my apartment.
Inside was a notice informing me that I hadn't paid my final month's rent. And because I hadn't paid my final month's rent, I wasn't getting my diploma. So while my classmates proudly held up their diplomas for graduation photos, I was holding a blank piece of paper. My mom thought it was hilarious and took a photo anyway, a permanent reminder that academic achievement and basic life skills are not always the same thing.
Then there was the Phi Beta Kappa incident. A few weeks before graduation, I was talking to my mom on the phone and complaining that some organization kept calling me and asking me to join. I wasn't returning their calls because I assumed it was some sort of sorority recruitment effort.
Now, if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you can probably guess that I was not exactly spending my college years rushing sororities. I was mostly hanging out with my dog in my off-campus apartment.
I told my mom the name of the organization. “Phi Beta Kappa.” There was a pause.
Then my mother informed me that Phi Beta Kappa was not, in fact, a sorority. It was a prestigious academic honor society and I should probably call them back. So I did.
And we attended the ceremony during graduation weekend. My mom took another photo and captioned it, “Our first Phi Betta Kappa!”
To this day, I still don't know how my mother immediately recognized Phi Beta Kappa and I thought it was a sorority. Honestly, if they hadn't kept calling me, I probably would have gone through life blissfully unaware of its existence. But that's sort of the point.
When you're young, there are entire worlds you haven't discovered yet. Estate planning is one of those worlds. Retirement accounts. Insurance. Taxes. Healthcare directives. Beneficiary designations. Powers of attorney.
Most people in their twenties aren't avoiding estate planning because they're irresponsible. They're avoiding it because nobody has ever explained it to them. And it feels complicated, expensive, and completely irrelevant until suddenly it isn't.
And that's what today's episode is about.
Because you don't need a trust fund, a complicated estate, or a large legal bill to take some important steps that protect both you and the people who love you.
Today's Tuesday Triage question comes from a young mechanic we'll call Kaitlin.
My husband took our car in for an oil change recently. He was wearing a Death Readiness Podcast sweatshirt and our car has a Death Readiness Podcast magnet on it, so apparently he looked like a walking advertisement.
The mechanic asked about the podcast, took a picture of the magnet, and asked him a question.
She wanted to know:
What should someone my age actually be doing about estate planning?
So Kaitlin, this episode is for you.
Before we get started, if you're listening and thinking, "I know I should get organized, but I have no idea where to begin," you're exactly who I created The Death Readiness Playbook for.
The Playbook is an educational tool that also walks you through the practical information your loved ones would need if something happened to you—from healthcare information and financial accounts to passwords, key contacts, and all the little details that keep life running. You can learn more at deathreadiness.com/playbook. That’s deathreadiness.com/playbook.
Now let’s get into today’s episode.
Estate planning isn't all or nothing. When people hear the phrase “estate plan,” they often picture a wealthy retiree sitting in a mahogany-paneled office signing a thick stack of legal documents. But that's not how most people start. I certainly didn't start that way.
Until I started practicing law at age 30, I didn't have any estate planning documents at all.
And by estate planning documents, I'm generally talking about four core documents:
A Last Will and Testament, a financial power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney, and a healthcare advance directive, sometimes called a living will.
What's funny is that even after I became an estate planning attorney, I didn't rush out and get everything done immediately.
What I did do was sign a financial power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney, and a healthcare advance directive.
A financial power of attorney allows someone to handle financial matters for you if you're unable to do so yourself.
Some financial powers of attorney become effective the moment you sign them. Those are called immediate powers of attorney.
Others are what's known as springing powers of attorney, meaning they only become effective after you've been determined to be incapacitated. Usually that determination is made by a physician, and the document should clearly spell out exactly how that process works.
If you'd like a deeper dive into powers of attorney and some of the practical problems families run into with them, I'll link to Episodes 17 and 68 in the show notes.
When I was 30, I signed an immediate financial power of attorney naming my dad as my agent.
Not because I expected him to start paying my bills or because I thought I was about to become incapacitated. I did it because I trusted him completely.
And because I knew something that most healthy thirty-year-olds don't like to think about:
Bad things happen to young people too.
I remember going for a run with some of my Dartmouth teammates and my coach. At the time, we were young, healthy, and focused on things like workouts, races, and what came next after graduation. None of us were thinking about estate planning.
But by the time I was thirty, one of those teammates had died of cancer. Within a few years, two others had died as well—one, a young mother of three, from cancer, and another, a newlywed, in a car accident after a weekend ski trip.
Around the same time, I often thought about one of my mother's cousins, who had fallen into a coma at a young age and never recovered.
Those experiences didn't make me think a catastrophe was likely. But they did teach me that it was possible.
And that's really all it takes to start seeing documents like powers of attorney differently.
I wanted someone I trusted to be able to step in if I ever needed help.
I also signed a healthcare power of attorney naming my dad to make medical decisions for me if I couldn't make them myself. And I signed a healthcare advance directive to document the kinds of end-of-life treatment I would—or would not—want if I were ever unable to speak for myself.
During law school in my Constitutional Law class, I learned about a young woman named Nancy Cruzan.
And her story completely changed the way I thought about healthcare powers of attorney and healthcare advance directives.
Nancy Cruzan wasn't elderly or terminally ill.
She was just 25 years old.
And because she hadn't left clear written instructions, her family spent years navigating court hearings, appeals, and ultimately a case before the United States Supreme Court—all while trying to answer a question that Nancy could no longer answer herself: What would she have wanted?
If you want to learn more about Nancy Cruzan and another young women whose medical fate became national news, Terri Schiavo, I’ll link to Episode 22, What Every Parent Needs to Know When Their Child Turns 18, in the show notes.
Most of us assume that if we've taken the time to put our end-of-life healthcare wishes in writing, those wishes will be followed.
But that's not always true.
And that brings me to something that many people don't know.
In many states, there is an exception for pregnant patients.
In these states, a pregnancy can invalidate end-of-life instructions that would otherwise be honored in an advance directive.
Now, if you're listening and thinking, “Well, that doesn't apply to me,” maybe not.
But it could apply to your daughter, your granddaughter, your spouse, your sister, or someone else you love. And that's why I want to spend a few minutes talking about a major change that just happened in Michigan.
Until a few weeks ago, Michigan law contained a little-known provision buried in its patient advocate statute.
If you became incapacitated and could no longer make your own medical decisions, your patient advocate could generally follow the instructions you had carefully documented. Unless you were pregnant.
Michigan’s law said the following: “The patient advocate designation cannot be used to make a medical treatment decision to withhold or withdraw treatment from a patient who is pregnant that would result in the pregnant patient’s death.”
That provision was recently challenged in court and struck down as a violation of Michigan’s 2022 constitutional amendment, often referred to as the Reproductive Freedom Amendment, which gives individuals a fundamental right to make and carry out decisions about pregnancy and related medical care.
Michigan doctors and patient advocates are no longer automatically blocked from honoring a pregnant patient’s wishes about terminating life-sustaining treatment.
If pregnancy and end-of-life decision making sound familiar, you may remember Adriana Smith, the Georgia nurse who made national headlines earlier this year after she was declared brain dead while 9 weeks pregnant and remained on body support until her baby could be delivered. I covered her story in depth in Episode 23, and I'll link to it in the show notes if you'd like to learn more about how pregnancy can affect end-of-life decision-making.
While the system is imperfect, and many states still have laws that can invalidate a pregnant individual's end-of-life wishes, the Michigan case is still a reminder that your voice matters. And the first step to making sure that voice can be heard is taking the time to document your wishes before a crisis occurs.
That's why, if you're young and listening to this episode wondering where to start, my answer is simple:
Start with the documents that help people take care of you while you're still alive.
A healthcare power of attorney.
An advance directive.
And a financial power of attorney.
Because if you're in your twenties or thirties, the biggest risk usually isn't that you'll die with a complicated estate.
The bigger risk is that you'll need help and nobody will have the legal authority to step in.
Michigan, where I live, has a statutory financial power of attorney form that's available online for free. I'll link it in the show notes for Michigan residents. Your state may have something similar.
Now, I'm generally not a huge fan of automated estate planning services for things like Wills and Trusts. I've seen enough of those documents over the years to know that the quality can vary significantly.
That said, a financial power of attorney is usually much simpler than a Will or Trust. So if cost is the primary barrier and you're trying to get something in place, an online option may be far better than having nothing at all.
And you can get healthcare powers of attorney and advance directives for free in any state. I’ll provide a link in the show notes.
And that brings me to Wills.
Did I have a Will when I was thirty years old and just starting my legal career?
No, I did not.
At the time, I was single, had no children, my dad was living, and my mom had recently passed away.
My estate consisted of four assets: a checking account, two 401(k)s, and a house.
My dad knew about all of them.
I had named him as the beneficiary on both retirement accounts and as the payable-on-death beneficiary on the checking account.
That meant he could receive those assets simply by presenting a death certificate.
The house would have gone through probate because I didn't have a Will.
But under my state's intestacy laws, the laws that control distribution of probate assets when an individual dies without a Will, my father would have inherited it anyway.
Was it ideal?
No.
Was it sufficient for that stage of my life?
Yes, it was.
And I think that's where people get stuck.
They think estate planning only counts if it's perfect.
They think they need every document, every answer, every account organized, every decision made.
But estate planning isn't a pass-fail test.
It's a series of small steps.
A healthcare power of attorney is a step.
An advance directive is a step.
A financial power of attorney is a step.
Adding beneficiaries to accounts is a step.
Writing down basic information for your family is a step.
And every one of those steps makes life easier for the people who may one day need to help you.
Because there is something worse than leaving your family a messy estate after you're gone.
It's leaving them helpless while you're still here.
Remember Nancy Cruzan who I mentioned at the beginning of this episode?
Her family spent years in court trying to answer a question that Nancy could no longer answer herself.
And the emotional toll was enormous.
In fact, Nancy's father, Joe Cruzan, died by suicide less than six years after Nancy's death.
Now, I can't tell you all the reasons why that happened.
But watching a child suffer, spending years in court, and carrying that burden must have been tremendous.
So no, you don't need everything.
And no, you don't need perfection.
But should you do something?
Absolutely.
When I was about to graduate from Dartmouth College, I didn't know what Phi Beta Kappa was. I didn't know I had forgotten to pay my last month's rent. And I certainly didn't know much about estate planning.
Being young often means discovering entire worlds of information that nobody has explained to you yet.
Estate planning is one of those worlds.
The good news is that you don't need to become an expert overnight. And you don't need a giant stack of legal documents.
You just need to take the next step.
Maybe that's signing a healthcare power of attorney, an advance directive, and a financial power of attorney.
Maybe it's filling out the free information sheets on my website so the people who love you know where to start if something happens.
The goal is to avoid handing your family a blank piece of paper when they need answers most.
The goal is to make life a little easier for the people who love you.
If today's episode made you realize there are parts of estate planning that nobody has ever explained to you, you're not alone.
That's exactly why I created the Death Readiness Playbook.
Most people don't need a 50-page legal document as their next step. They need a place to start. A way to organize their information, think through important decisions, and make life easier for the people they love.
If you're ready to move beyond good intentions and take that next step, check out The Death Readiness Playbook at deathreadiness.com/playbook. That’s deathreadiness.com/playbook.
Thanks for listening today.
This is Death Readiness, real, messy and yours to own. I’m Jill Mastroianni and I’m here to help you sort through it, especially when you don’t know where to start.
Hi, I'm April, Jill's daughter. Thanks for listening to The Death Readiness Podcast. While my mom is an attorney, she’s not your attorney. The Death Readiness Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not provide legal advice. For legal guidance tailored to your unique situation, consult with a licensed attorney in your state. To learn more about the services my mom offers, visit DeathReadiness.com.
