Read time: 2 mins (approx.)

Most people who come to us have a will.

They had it drawn up years ago.

It was probably prompted by a house purchase, the birth of a child, or a moment when mortality briefly felt real.

They filed it somewhere safe and largely stopped thinking about it.

This is understandable. Having a will feels like the job is done.

In one narrow sense, it is. There are instructions for what happens to your estate after you die, and that matters.

But a will is a document. A plan is something else entirely.

A will is typically written at a single point in time, reflecting the family, the assets and the wishes you had on the day it was signed.

Life, of course, does not stay still.

Children grow up and start families of their own. Assets change in value and in nature.

Relationships shift. Tax rules evolve. A business that barely existed ten years ago may now be one of the most significant things you own.

The will in the drawer may say nothing useful about any of that.

A plan accounts for what happens before you die as well as after.

It considers what happens if you lose capacity, not just if you lose your life.

It thinks about the people who will inherit, when they will inherit, and whether that timing actually serves them well.

It asks whether the people named in your documents, your executors, your trustees, your attorneys, are still the right people, and whether they know what will be asked of them when the time comes.

It looks at whether the structures around your assets reflect your current wishes and your current family, or whether they reflect who you were and what you had a decade ago.

A will tells people what to do when you are gone.

A plan makes sure the right things happen, to the right people, at the right time, whether you are here or not.

The two are not the same thing, and one does not automatically produce the other.

If you have a will but are not sure whether you have a plan, that is probably worth exploring.