I’ve been having this reoccurring dream:  I am in my office and my phone rings.  I answer.  On the other end is my dog, Ernie and he talks.  It is funny, in my dream, I do not seem to be phased (at all) by the fact my dog is on the phone.  The conversation goes something like this:

Ernie/Dog:  “Marc, I’m going in for surgery in the morning…I’m just a little worried.  What will happen if I  die?”

Marc/Lawyer:  “Ernie, have you ever seen the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven?”

Ernie/Dog:  “I don’t watch TV.  What’s going to happen to my stuff if I die?”

Marc/Lawyer:  “Let me check your file.  I’ll give you a call back.”

Most of the time, I wake up at that point.  When I am awake and on the job, I get similar calls from my clients.  Being a sympathetic person, I bite my tongue and resist the urge to mention the bad results of planning during the 11th hour

Time can be your best friend, or your worst enemy, and when you are planning or trying to understand the ramifications of your plan on the way to the hospital, time is not on your side.  There is a line in a Bob Dylan song “Time is an ocean, but baby it’s at the shore.” When you are having surgery in the morning, time is “at the shore.”

Trying to pull a plan together in a day or a week before some sort of major surgery is risky.  It is certainly not a big picture approach and there are many reasons why it is inadvisable.    Two major reasons are Contemplation and Cost.

This approach usually lacks the contemplation (on the part of both the client and the attorney) that is necessary to create a plan that is comprehensive and correct.  To get the most benefit out of your estate plan, lots of thought should be put into its’ design, which is difficult to do in an extremely short time frame.

This approach also costs more (note:  other lawyers hate when I talk about how jobs are priced, I mean they want to charge you lots of money- but they are generally horrible at communicating the reasons why).  On pricing, an old, salty lawyer once said to me “You can have it Fast, Correct and Cheap- Pick two out of three.”  If you want it, Fast and Correct- it is not going to be cheap.  If the attorney has to interrupt his schedule to create, draft and properly execute a plan under the gun, before you go under the knife, it is going to cost more, much more.  If the attorney then has to leave, his office to see you at the hospital, it’s going to cost you much, much, much, much more.

You can get a much better plan for less money if you do not wait until the last minute.  If you’ve got surgery planned, make sure your plan is in place long before you go under the knife.