10 Steps to Better Retirement and Estate Planning

3. Come prepared to discuss personal matters.

Retirement and estate planning are, contrary to popular opinion, not dry financial topics. In fact, few choices in life say so much about your big-picture goals, your dreams, and the way you’d like to be remembered.

“Everybody assumes that money management and financial matters ought to be sort of cold and calculating, and that you ought to be able to do them without any emotion attached to them,” Clark says. “But the fact of the matter is, particularly when you are dealing with someone who has spent a lifetime building up a pool of assets, you’re not just asking ‘What do you want to do with the money?’ but also ‘What sort of legacy do you want the money to help you leave?’”

The process can be very emotional, she says, and in order to help you make the best decisions, your advisor needs to understand your family dynamics and your inner priorities. Not all children manage money equally well. Not everyone wants the same kind of retirement.

And most people don’t see money in the same way as their spouses do.

“The vast majority of them have very different opinions about how it should be managed, how it should be gifted, and even how much to let the kids know,” Clark says. “You might have one client who says ‘Let’s show the kids everything,’ and another who realizes that it might distort the kids’ priorities. This really isn’t as much about whether to put the money in stocks or bonds as it is about the big questions: How do I best leave money to the kids? Do I want to give to my alma mater now, when I can actually see the building go up with my name on the wall, or do I want to wait until I’m sure I’ve got enough to live on and then give them whatever’s left?”

4. Don’t be afraid of probate.

Minnesota is one of many states in the United States that has almost fully adopted the Uniform Probate Code, a piece of legislation whose purpose was to make the probate process less labor- and cost-intensive, says Bill Kuhlmann, senior vice president for U.S. Trust, a wealth-management firm in Minneapolis. (Probate is the process of establishing the legal validity of a will before a judicial authority.) But many people remain unaware of its effects, especially those who have moved to Minnesota from states that have adopted only certain parts of the code. California, for example, is notorious for doing things its own (rather complicated) way.

Kuhlmann says, “Even if you have to go through probate in Minnesota, the code permits anything from a very streamlined to a very rigorous process. With most probates here, you go to the registrar. No one ever goes to court.”