Carolina Scipioni
Endowment and Planned Giving Program Manager
As soon as my husband and I had our first child 16 years ago, we knew we needed to document our estate plan and make arrangements for guardianship should something happen to both of us. Our daughter was the most amazing treasure ever entrusted to us, and we needed to make sure she was going to be ok even if we were not around.
But knowing that something is needed and actually making it happen are two different things. We welcomed our second, third and then fourth child and still, no plan was drafted. Just like most people, we become very good at procrastinating. It wasn’t until two years ago that we actually grasped the importance and urgency of having our wishes documented.
This realization came, very sadly, as we were saying goodbye to a dear friend and Godfather to one of our sons. In the spring of 2017, after suffering from stomach pain for a few weeks, he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and given only four weeks to live. We were devastated with the news and overwhelmed by how fast things were progressing. While we knew we had to face the reality that he wouldn’t be with us to enjoy life and watch the kids grow up, what we didn’t expect was to learn how complicated and messy leaving everything behind really is.
Being hospitalized with a terminal illness is not easy: coping with the effects of the illness itself, dealing with health insurance, meeting a stream of nurses, finding spiritual support, taking notes on what the doctors say, remembering what medicine to take, etc. In the middle of this tsunami of emotions, nobody wants to deal with anything else. Our friend never thought about what he was leaving behind, but worried about minimizing the impact on his family. So, when the flow of visitors died down, he had to do things he didn’t feel like doing… like writing down passwords to access accounts and pay bills, finding a new home for his dog, arranging for what to do with his house, car and other things he owned.
Even the most responsible and forward-thinking people often fail to plan for the unexpected. My husband and I were also guilty of this. As we supported our friend’s family, we began to make changes so that if we found ourselves in the same position, we would have a plan in place. We learned the hard way that this is one of those things that just can’t wait.
A few weeks after our friend passed away, we made an appointment with an attorney to start drafting our estate plan. The most interesting thing is that we had postponed the planning for so long in part because we dreaded the process and thought of trusts and wills mostly as “a lot of paperwork.” But to our surprise, this was an amazing opportunity for deep conversations as husband and wife and a time to reflect on the past, count our blessings and discern the kind of future we wanted for our children.
It was during this process that we agreed that generosity was one of the most important values that we wanted to pass on to our four children. Because of that, naming the Catholic Church as a beneficiary of a percentage of our assets was not a difficult decision. As we continue to teach our kids during our life to be generous with what God has given them, we also dream that one day after we both go to heaven, our children -and perhaps grandchildren- will find, enclosed in our living trust, our last lesson in generosity.