Expecting and having a child changes your life in many ways. Your perspective changes, your priorities change. You start to think about your future more, and what the future will look like for your child. If you’re like me, you might also become more anxious about bad things happening. You want to make sure your kids will be taken care of if anything happens to you. Estate planning, or documenting your wishes to ensure there’s a plan in place for managing your affairs in your absence, will give you so much peace of mind in the midst of those pesky anxious thoughts. Naturally, the sooner you get this done for yourself and your family the better–and if you can do it before your baby is even here, that’s great!
Obviously, if you already have kids, go ahead and do your planning as soon as you can. However, if you are pregnant or trying to have a child, do not intentionally wait until after you give birth to get your estate plan done. There is frankly no good reason to wait, since you can easily provide for your future-born children in your plan.
You can provide for unborn children in your plan
I don’t know if this is a common misconception or what, but you can definitely (and easily) provide for your hypothetical children in your estate plan documents. You do not need to state their names or their birthdays in the documents. For example, say you just got married and you want to get pregnant at some point in the future but it hasn’t happened yet. Your trust can state that all of your property should go to your spouse if you die, and otherwise to all of your children equally (even if you currently have no children). You’d then also declare where your assets should go in the event there are no children to inherit from you- your siblings or charity, maybe. You can also nominate a guardian for your future children so that in the event it is ever needed, the person you’d want will have a better chance at getting custody.
If you do this, you won’t need to automatically update everything once you do, in fact, have your first child. They’re already covered in there and you have a plan in place. Of course, if it makes you more comfortable to name your child specifically in your documents, you can certainly update any and all of your documents to reflect the new change, or perhaps wait until you have other substantive changes to make as well and do it all at once.
Do it while you have the time.
Trust me, you are not going to want to bother with this legal stuff during your maternity leave, or when you are in the thick of the newborn phase getting no sleep, or when your baby becomes a toddler and you are trying to juggle all the things. Put this on your checklist of things to do before your baby gets here and I promise you’ll be very glad you did.
Giving birth is a major medical event.
I know it’s not fun to think about, but pregnancy and giving birth to a baby is not easy on your body. It is a major, major medical event. Just like surgery. Just as I would advise getting your legal affairs in order before having open-heart surgery, I recommend having things in place before giving birth. Designate people to be your decision-makers and agents in case you’re out of commission for a while. Take your Advance Health Care Directive and your HIPAA Release with you to the hospital so that your medical provider knows who your health care agent is and can talk freely with them. Give your spouse power of attorney to manage financial things if you can’t. Etc.
You can always update it or make changes down the road (but you may not need to).
Your living trust, will, durable powers of attorney, advance health care directive, etc– each of these documents are revocable, meaning you can change them as much and as often as you want as long as you have the capacity to do so. You can also (and should) designate alternatives in case your first choice people can’t do whatever role you’ve selected them for.
Are you worried that you might change your mind about who the best guardian would be for your kid? Document what you want for now. You can change it later.
You’d want your parents listed as guardians or agents if something happened today but probably not ten years from now? Document what you want for now. You can change it later (or they can decline and whoever is next on the list can step up).
Five years go by and suddenly your best friend is no longer your best friend and you don’t want her involved? Fine! Change it.
Happy estate planning! And if you are reading this while pregnant, congratulations! Go get this done!
