Is your Attorney selling you short?

Almost every one of us will bequeath material assets behind following our passing. After all has been said and done, that is where it normally ends; a ribbon bound dossier in a lawyer’s filing cabinet – the sum total of your materialistic life.

For the uninformed of you, by not having a Will, you will die intestate. That means all your assets will be handed to the government for someone there to decide what to do with your things.

The physical documents crystallise closure to a life that was unique to us, but simply another statistic to be added to the State’s records.

However, I’m not here to discuss that.

Did you know that there is more to a simple Will than what is traditionally taught?

My concern is about lawyers choosing not to offer, what can only be described as the most fundamental aspects of a Will, to their clients. They are leaving out the final and most important addendum that actually completes a Will, thus selling their clients short in the process.

And you, the public, would be excused for not knowing about it. Lawyers tend to focus on legalise and ignore Emotional components to legal documentation. They therefore leave out informing you about the final steps.

It’s in their training to be linear thinking, when in fact, if you think about it, drafting a Will or Trust document is one of the most Emotional acts you would ever have to do. That’s because it involves setting up your legacy and guides dependents as they live out their lives, as Shakespeare rightly said, on this world’s stage.

Their blatant disregard for the Emotional addendums or similar type products, the ones that offer nuggets of value and family guidance, keeps the public in the dark.

Don’t think for one minute that Emotional details on a Will have no legal basis. The fact of the matter is that many a person drafts their Will in such an ambiguous way that it’s difficult for the Executor of their Estate to understand the intent of the deceased.

The Emotional values and experiences captured in the special addendum can assist an Attorney in executing the affairs of their clients’ estate in a manner that is agreeable with their values and interests.

It can be used to support or offer basis for intent in a variety of probate matters such as trust funding and asset distributions. When an Attorney has access to the Emotional Will addendum, they can better personalise their client’s legal matters.

So! Why then are they not at least informing their clients that these options are available to them, when in fact the practice is not new?

Let me just say that Emotional will addendums have been around for ages. The earliest addendums were passed on by word of mouth (story telling), while those of later generations were recorded on paper.

It seems the practitioners of Will writers have forgotten about the tradition or simply couldn’t be bothered to work with clients to record their values and life experiences as insightful beacons for their children to live their lives by.

Older generations were aware of the value of the Emotional Will addendum. Wills dating from the Medieval and Renaissance periods have been preserved to modern times and all of them have passed down the values and opinions of family life to their beneficiaries.

First described 3000 years ago in the Christian Bible, many cultures have some version of the Emotional will - some quite new, like the “ending notes” gaining popularity among the elderly in Japan, and some as ancient as the Talmud’s. Medieval models can be found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Even the fifth-century rabbis who codified Jewish biblical teachings in the Talmud enjoined Jews to make Emotional wills. By the middle Ages, emotional wills were a common practice among prominent Jews. Today, as then, the classic Jewish Will is modelled after the dying patriarch Jacob’s blessing on his sons, and ends, as Jacob’s did, with one’s wishes about burial.

My obsession to evolve the way this day and age lawyers do Wills is spurred on from other sources of research that support the need to augment the legal document with the addendum.

Among the research was a paper compiled by Ken Dychtwald on behalf of Allianz Life Assurance, which shows that there is a need to enhance the publics existing traditionally accepted view of “Wills”, to allow them to reflect not only their material wealth but also their Emotional and ethical values.

Other opinions have begun to surface through the phenomenon of sudden wealth which is also driving some to consider what Michael J.A. Smith, a managing director of Deutsche Bank in New York, calls “social capital.” In the wake of huge success, says Smith, his clients “feel the need to come to some agreement about who they are and how they want their descendants to interact with society. The patriarch or matriarch often wants to come up with a family mission statement”. These statements are tantamount to the Emotional addendum.

Emotional Wills can be helpful in establishing estate plans, too. Tim Mininger, senior financial adviser with Univest Trust & Wealth Management in Souderton, said that for many, creating an ethical or “Emotional Will” helps bring the sense that their values won't pass away when they do.

When people realise the need to embellish their Wills with their character, so that they can be represented as the person they truly are, they need solutions. If none are offered by Attorneys, clients will only be remembered by the opinions others had of them - not a true reflection of a person who spent their entire life gaining enormous experiences to only have them taken to the grave with them.

What a tragedy!

Isn’t it about time lawyers / solicitors start to investigate ways to help their clients establish their family values or at least help them find solutions to share their opinions about their lives to teach and instruct their children and their children’s children?

If the Legal Will remains the afterlife asset distribution channel of the day, then it stands to reason that this is the vehicle to attach the Emotional Will addendum. This will formalise the values, instructions and opinions of the deceased. In my opinion, Attorneys fall short of their ethical standards if they ignore the need.

If they embrace this new opportunity, Attorneys offer “best practice” to their clients thus helping them to be remembered by those they once loved so dearly, as well as being emotively braided through the timeless gene pool.

I will concede that there are some Attorneys in the United Kingdom and South Africa who embrace this practice. There is an official addendum out there and they have begun informing their clients about it. But they are a select few.

If Attorney’s never get to the point of providing their clients with an Emotional Will addendum, they sell their clients short and leave their Wills incomplete.

Ask your Attorney for the Emotional Will and see what I mean.