You Came In. You Made the Decisions. Then Nothing Happened.

The Consultation Was the Hard Part

You sat down with an attorney and did the work most people avoid. You decided who gets the house. You picked the child who has a head for this sort of thing, and you were honest with yourself about which one does not. You talked about what should happen if you could not speak for yourself.

You left with a plan. And then you went home, and the plan stayed where you left it.

• With nothing signed, none of that conversation is legally operative.

Not the decisions, not our notes, not your intent. 

• With nothing signed, you have NO will and NO power of attorney,

and the law fills both gaps for you.

 

⚖️ Without a will, the statute writes one

In New York, if you are survived by a spouse and children, the statute gives your spouse the first $50,000 and one-half of what remains. Your children divide the other half. That figure has never been adjusted for inflation; it is still $50,000 today.

Not the house to one child and the accounts to another. Not a trust for the grandchild who needs one. Not the arrangement you sat in our office and worked out. A fixed percentage split, applied mechanically, regardless of what anyone in the family understood your wishes to be.

🏛️ Without a power of attorney, the court steps in

If you lose the ability to manage your own affairs — a stroke, a fall, a diagnosis that moves faster than anyone expected — no one has authority to act for you. Not your spouse. Not the child you chose. Nobody can sign a check, sell the house, manage your properties, pay the nursing home, or move a dollar on your behalf.

The only remaining option is to go to court and ask a Judge to appoint a guardian for you under Article 81 of the Mental Hygiene Law.

That proceeding is public. A court evaluator is appointed to investigate your circumstances and report to the judge on whether you can manage your own affairs. Counsel may be appointed to represent you. Those professionals are paid from your assets, which may become an open checkbook. The judge — not you — then decides who controls your finances.

Courts do give preference to family. But families who disagree with one another, or where the assets are complex, are precisely how an independent professional guardian ends up appointed instead: someone you have never met, managing your accounts, business, and your home, drawing commissions from the assets you spent a lifetime building. It is a reasonable system, and it exists for good reason. It is also entirely avoidable.

A power of attorney takes “no time” to sign and prevents the entire proceeding.

🤔 The part people do not anticipate

Signing a power of attorney requires legal capacity. The window in which you can execute these documents closes before the window in which you are alive and well — and it can close without warning, leaving you here for years while your family sits in a courtroom sorting out authority you could have granted in twenty minutes.

 

💵 Waiting costs money, too

Doing nothing is not free. Without documents in place, your estate can face a bond, court fees, and months of professional time — all paid for out of what you left your family.

Retirement accounts can be forced out faster than they should be and taxed at higher rates than necessary. And New York’s estate tax has a hard edge that planning is designed to keep you away from.

In most cases, the cost of finishing the plan is a fraction of what not finishing it costs.

You already did the hard part. What is left is an appointment.

Estate planning asks you to sit in a room and picture not being here. Nobody wants to think about their death.

But the avoidance has a cost, and your children are the ones who pay it: an administration proceeding that a will would have simplified, a guardianship that a single document would have prevented, taxes that planning would have reduced, and months of court supervision during the worst year of their lives. They will be handling all of it while grieving, and they will be paying for it out of what you left them.

✍️ The good news is what's left is simple:

A short meeting, a signature, and we handle the rest. Then it's done, and it's one less thing for you and your family to worry about.

- Brian A. Raphan, Esq.

For more information: 📧 Email: info@raphanlaw.com  📞 Call: 212-268-8200 to schedule an appointment