Estate Planning Ideas: National Ice Cream Month

Avoiding Probate is the Cherry on Top of your Estate Plan

It is summertime, and the living is easy.

Maybe you spent the day out on the boat, at the beach, or at home relaxing in your most comfortable lounge chair. As the sun sets, you have a hankering for a sweet treat and decide to get some ice cream—a no-brainer in July, National Ice Cream Month.

Do you want to eat what is in the freezer or go out? Should you order online or decide at the window? Cone or cup? Dairy or nondairy? What flavor are you craving?

You are facing what is known as the “ice cream dilemma,” which has become a metaphor for the difficulty of decision-making when there are nearly unlimited options. This dilemma could help explain why only around one in three American adults has an estate plan: They do not know where to start and are overwhelmed by the decision-making process.

So perhaps you start small, with a relatively easy decision, such as finishing the ice cream bars you have already bought or, in the case of your estate plan, choosing how to transfer some of your assets (your accounts, money, and property) outside of probate.

Why Avoid Probate? The Cherry on Top

You have put together the basics of your estate plan, but something seems to be missing—that last little sweet detail that ties it all together and crowns your efforts, turning a few simple scoops into something special, satisfying, and totally shareworthy.

Skipping probate is the cherry on top of your estate plan. It avoids the court-supervised procedure of validating a will, settling debts, and distributing a person’s assets according to their estate plan (or, if no estate plan exists, according to state law). Probate can drag on for 6 to18 months depending on the jurisdiction, tying up assets when families need them most. It also carries with it administrative and court fees (in some states up to 3–7 percent of the value of what you own at death), melting away wealth like ice cream in the heat. Still another downside of the probate process is that it is public, meaning that some of your personal and financial details become part of the public record.

Unlike the selection of 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins, nonprobate transfers come in three basic flavors of passing assets to beneficiaries outside probate, where transfers are faster and more private.

Joint Ownership: A Double Scoop

Assets held jointly with rights of survivorship automatically pass to the surviving owner upon death, bypassing probate.

Joint ownership is like a double scoop on a single cone—great when things hold up, but if one scoop melts or starts to slip, the whole thing can topple. It can be sweet when both owners are aligned but risky when life gets messy and you are the one stuck holding the cone.