Tackling the behavioral factors that keep you from making a will

Too few American adults have a will and even fewer update it regularly. According to the most recent Pew Research Center survey on aging, among 8,750 U.S. adult respondents—fewer than one in three—have a will. Similarly, Caring.com’s most recent wills survey, conducted with YouGov and involving more than 2,500 participants, showed that fewer than one in four has a will, a number that has declined from one in three over the previous three years.

In other words, a lot of people are potentially leaving something really important to their families up to chance and good faith.

The obvious problem is that too few people are properly assessing their assets and planning on how to distribute them after they die—an oversight that can make life vastly more complicated for their survivors.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond preparing your family and friends, wills have a host of other potential benefits. They can encourage conversations about a wide range of topics, from finances to plans to the things that you hold dear. And those discussions have the potential to help you connect with your family members, enriching your relationships. In other words, when you don't create a will, you not only shortchange the future, but may actually be missing opportunities in the here and now.

Lacking the will

As a previous story explained, there are a lot of reasons that people choose not to write a will. For example, many people worry about losing control—the idea is that we may resist creating a document that would give up some of our autonomy. Or, alternately, many people resist writing a will because of present bias, in which the emotions of the present outweigh the emotions of the future.

Understanding these underlying behavioral factors may make it easier to ponder the act of making and updating a will. And overcoming them can position you to take care of some of the things that you deeply value, such as family unity, connection and legacy.

Looking past the present

Present bias is one of the major issues that keep people from making a will. Basically, present bias suggests that the person you are today views each future version of yourself as a completely different person. You may, consequently, care less about welfare, says Jeff Kreisler, Head of Behavioral Science at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Put another way, when faced with a problem, we sometimes have a tendency to say that it is a concern for "tomorrow me," rather than "today me." This tendency to prioritize your current comfort can lead you to put burdens on your future shoulders.

This plays out when it comes time to make a will. "Since it’s hard to emotionally connect with future versions of ourselves, making financial decisions that affect future versions of ourselves and our family members becomes more complex and uncertain," Kreisler says. In other words, it’s harder to decide how to divvy up assets between children when the details involve planning, time, stress, mortality and hard questions, all of which can seem painful to navigate right now. Rather than deal with them today, we tend to put these decisions off as a problem for "tomorrow me" to address.

Two ways to combat this trend are to either reduce the immediate pain of this process or make that future we’re building more tangible, so you are emotionally invested in it and can use it to motivate our present actions. In other words, we need to shift our perspective: rather than putting off a difficult problem until tomorrow, we need to focus on how making a plan for the future removes uncertainty right now.

"By shaping the future for your children and grandchildren and considering specific, personal, concrete details about that future, such as your daughter's retirement and health care expenses and your grandson's education, you will be able to see—and feel—how all those decisions are emotionally relevant to you in the present," Kreisler says.

In other words, once you get a handle on what you want in the future, you can lay the groundwork for it right now.

Taking control

Another barrier to writing a will is the issue of control. For many people, making a will feels like a loss of control—by writing a will, they fear that they are giving up control of their future.

But control works both ways. Think about it like this: "Without even a basic will in place, you surrender control over the allocation of your assets to the state, taxes or whoever in your surviving family has the strongest voice to decide matters," Kreisler says. Effectively, you cede control over your estate to whatever machinations will occur after your death.

On the other hand, making a will allows you to seize that control…or at least, to control what we can control. For example, a skilled estate planner may be able to help determine how much of your estate goes to the government after you're gone.

Beyond that, though, a will can enable you to direct which of your family members inherit parts of your estate. With a will, you can prepare bequests so that your grandson gets the mantle clock he always wanted or your granddaughter gets the stamp collection that you spent hours poring over together. And, when it comes to assets and resources, you can specifically earmark them for children and grandchildren, giving you the option to preserve their security and help them on their own paths, long after you're gone.

But that's for the future. In the here and now, an estate plan helps prepare family members for their lives by giving them a path forward. By demonstrating effective financial planning, you can instruct and advise them, modeling behavior that will improve their security throughout their lives, Kreisler says.

A legacy of trust

Estate planning can also inspire valuable conversations, helping you learn more about your family's plans and priorities and reducing the risk of miscommunication. "Drafting a will and sharing it with your family presents an opportunity to have a conversation about your intentions, your plans and your values… and, hopefully, your family’s, too," Kreisler says.

Discussing those plans today can help you build a closer relationship with your children and learn their desires. After all, "maybe your daughter hates the house and lives across the country, and your son has no interest in the business," Kreisler says. These are important factors to know and consider. And, having those conversations now can give more insight into your family's hopes and dreams, bringing you closer to each other.

Even if there is little or nothing to pass down to anyone, discussing these matters and introducing relevant data points can help the next generation prepare, rather than struggle to process and address painful, complex or inconvenient information while they're grieving, Kreisler says. By creating realistic expectations, you can save them difficulties down the road.

Pondering mortality can be intimidating, and it's understandable why many people avoid discussing it. But by reframing it as an opportunity to explore your family's plans and dreams, you can transform it from an exercise in doom and gloom to a catalyst for building better relationships and meaningful conversations with the people you love. And that's a legacy that your family will treasure long after you're gone.

Want to learn more about how personal and emotional factors affect the decisions you and your family members make about your finances, such as writing a will? Reach out to a J.P. Morgan Advisor and find out how our Behavioral Science team can help guide you and your family toward making sound financial choices.

For Informational/Educational Purposes Only: The opinions expressed in this article may differ from other employees and departments of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Opinions and strategies described may not be appropriate for everyone and are not intended as specific advice/recommendation for any individual. You should carefully consider your needs and objectives before making any decisions and consult the appropriate professional(s). Outlooks and past performance are not guarantees of future results.