We once spent $100,000 on a home addition for a primary bedroom suite to accommodate our growing family. On the surface, it looked great. It had high ceilings, a walk-in closet and a screened-in porch. |
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Death Readiness Dispatch April 29, 2026 |
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Hi there, We once spent $100,000 on a home addition for a primary bedroom suite to accommodate our growing family. On the surface, it looked great. It had high ceilings, a walk-in closet and a screened-in porch. It was a beautiful new space that felt like the right next step for our family. And for a while, everything seemed fine…until it wasn’t. Cracks started showing up. They were subtle at first, then impossible to ignore. When we got ready to sell, we had a choice: Patch over the cracks and move on or figure out what was really going on. We brought in a structural engineer. And then we spent another $70,000 fixing a problem that would have never existed if the addition were built correctly from the beginning. |
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Because I see the same thing happen in estate planning all the time. I see estate plans that look right. But underneath the professional façade is an estate planning disaster. |
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Is your estate plan just a stack of papers? |
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A client recently came to me with two life insurance trusts- signed, notarized, and sitting in a beautiful binder. There was just one problem. They didn’t accomplish anything. The life insurance policies were never transferred to the trusts. The trusts weren’t named as beneficiaries. So the entire strategy, the reason those documents existed in the first place, never actually got implemented. It was the estate planning version of our home addition — drywall over a structural problem. |
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The part most people miss |
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An ILIT (irrevocable life insurance trust) can be a powerful tool. But it only works if: - the trust actually owns the policy,
- the trust is named as beneficiary, and
- someone is doing the ongoing administrative work required to keep it compliant
It’s an intricate system, not a one-time task. In many cases, it’s a system no one is actually maintaining. - what an ILIT actually is (in plain English),
- when it makes sense (and when it doesn’t),
- why these trusts fail so often, and
- what has to happen behind the scenes for them to work
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Why your life insurance trust might not work |
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Curious whether your estate plan works? |
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It’s one thing to have documents. It’s another to know they’ll actually work when your family needs them. In an estate plan audit, we walk through your plan together so you can understand what you have, what’s missing, and what might need attention. |
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PS: Our foster puppy Boots was adopted! She’s off to her next chapter, and we’re so happy for her… even if we miss that little troublemaker already. |
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1002 S. Wilson Ave.
Royal Oak, MI 48067, United States |
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