Do-Overs

For 22 years I have commuted between Brewster and Mahopac. My route has changed a few times over that period, as a short-cut was abandoned following an unexpected, early morning rendezvous with a deer.

It was not an immediate repudiation of that particular commute. I tried the short cut a few more times, but after noticing more than one deer standing on the roadside, eyeing me with a mixture of suspicion and contempt, I decided to stick to Route 6.

Commuting affords me a sliver of time to listen to podcasts and audiobooks – mostly sports, history, interviews, and occasionally fiction. Once in a while a recording captures my attention and the anticipation for the next leg of my commute builds as I contemplate the next listening opportunity.

The novel “Twice” by Mitch Albom had a familiar premise – a character was able to travel back to the past to change events in their life to alter the future whenever they wanted. The catch was that the character could only experience a moment twice. There was no third time.

The audiobook version drew me in quickly and got me thinking. We screw things up… a lot. Not necessarily big things, although that happens too. We say the wrong thing, don’t listen, make a poor first impression, focus on the wrong priorities. We apologize but it doesn’t change the outcome.

However, my profession allows me to change certain things. Estate planners can change the future.

The documents we create – wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care proxies – are not encased in cement. They can be changed. Even irrevocable trusts have the ability to be revoked, provided specific conditions are met. Your closest people today may become strangers tomorrow, and vice versa. Your assets may rise and fall with the seasons.

Estate planning documents are only recipes. If you do not like the taste, change the ingredients.

You may have favored one child in the past. Your revocable trust had provisions leaving a higher percentage of your trust estate to that child and their family, and your other child was going to get less. There was nothing wrong with them, you just felt that the favored child went the extra mile. This was the version of the future that you set up all those years ago.

Then, at a holiday dinner, you looked around the dining room table. You saw all of your children and grandchildren smiling and laughing together. A sudden thought flashed in your head: the unequal nature of the trust provisions would create bad feelings.

Rewarding one meant hurting the other, and that was not what you wanted.

Your younger self had a more simplistic view of the world, but you have evolved. A different future can be ordered… one with equality. One that allows all of your grandchildren to afford college without loans. One that removes enough struggle to ensure a fighting chance for success.

You do not own a time machine or have a special power, but you do have an estate planning attorney. You call and make an appointment and the two of you change the future.

Alan D. Feller, Esq., is managing partner of The Feller Group, located at 572 Route 6, Suite 103, Mahopac. He can be reached at alandfeller@thefellergroup.com.