Tell the Kids: The Call Parents Put Off
August 19, 2026
Listen Now
Subscribe
Ready to talk with an advisor?
The advisors at American Retirement Advisors have been having these conversations for over 25 years. A no-cost discovery session is the fastest way to find out where you actually stand.
Schedule a Discovery Session
Show Notes
Eddie and Betty's Conversation
Welcome back to The American Retirement Advisor. I'm Betty, and Eddie's here with me in the studio today, as always. Eddie, I want to jump right in because Ian Schaeffer published something this week that I genuinely think a lot of our listeners need to hear, and I mean need, not just should probably read someday. It's about the conversation that comes after you've done all the estate planning work. The documents are signed, the trust is funded, and then... nothing. Nobody in the family knows any of it.
Yeah, and that framing stopped me when I read it, because you'd think the hard part is getting the documents done, right? And it is hard. We've been talking all week about how most people put it off for years. But Ian's pointing out there's a second layer of avoidance that happens even after the paperwork is complete, and it's somehow easier to avoid than the legal stuff was.
He even tells a story on himself. His father has spent decades in this work, helping families put these plans together, and Ian says that even in their own house, there was a full year where the estate documents were updated and done before the family sat down and talked through who does what. So this isn't a knowledge problem. People who know better still avoid the conversation.
That line in the article is worth sitting with, about how knowing something and doing something are two different muscles. I think that's true of a lot of things in financial planning, but it's especially true here, because the stakes feel so personal that most people would rather just... not.
So why don't they? I mean, what's the actual fear that's keeping parents quiet once all the work is done?
Ian gives two reasons and I think they're both really honest. The first one is the obvious one: the conversation feels like it's about death, and nobody wants to open a regular Tuesday night dinner with that. So it gets pushed to a better time, and the thing about a better time for that particular subject is that it has to be chosen on purpose, because a natural opening for it just doesn't show up.
There's never going to be a moment where everyone's relaxed, the kids are in a good mood, and someone thinks, you know what, this would be a great time to talk about what happens when we're gone.
Right. It has to be initiated. It doesn't arise. And then the second reason Ian names is quieter, and I thought it was a really perceptive observation. Parents worry that naming an executor out loud is going to feel like naming a favorite. Like whichever adult child doesn't get that role is going to feel stung by it.
And I can see that. If you have three kids and you pick one to be the executor, the other two might wonder what that says about how you see them.
Right, but Ian pushes back on that fear pretty directly. He says that from the conversations their advisors have with families every week, the child who is not named executor is almost always relieved. Because being an executor is a task, not a trophy. It means paperwork, phone calls, weeks of estate administration on top of grieving. Most people are genuinely glad it's someone else's job.
That reframes the whole thing. Because I think a lot of parents picture this moment where they tell one kid and the other kids feel left out, and instead what's more likely is the other kids are quietly thinking, thank goodness.
And it shifts how you go into that conversation. If you walk in assuming you're delivering news someone might resent, you're going to be nervous and you're going to overthink it. If you walk in understanding that you're handing someone a responsibility they probably didn't ask for, and telling the others they're off the hook, the whole tone is different.
Okay so what does the conversation need to cover? Because I think people picture this big formal sit-down and Ian's saying it's a lot simpler than that.
He's very clear on this. Three things. First, who is the executor and who is the backup if that person can't serve. Second, who holds medical and financial power of attorney if you're alive but can't make decisions, and whether that's the same person or someone different. Third, where the documents live, not the contents, just the location, and who to call first.
That's it?
That's it. You're not reading the will aloud at the dinner table. The way Ian puts it, you're handing your kids a map so that if the day ever comes, they're not also searching for the map.
I love that image, because when you're in grief, adding a logistical scavenger hunt on top of it is brutal. And it happens all the time. Someone passes and the family is making phone calls trying to figure out if there's a will, who the attorney was, what accounts exist.
And the documents might be sitting in a safe or a filing cabinet or a folder from the attorney, and nobody knew to look there, or what was in it, or who to call. That's the gap this one conversation closes.
Ian gives a pretty specific script in the article for how to start the call, and I want to talk about that because I found it really useful as a model. Can you walk through what he suggests?
Sure. It goes something like this, and this is his language: your mother and I got our estate plan finished, and I want you to know a few things, not everything, just the practical parts. You're named as executor, which means if something happens to us, you're the one who handles the paperwork and calls our attorney. Your sister is the backup. The documents are with our attorney and I'll send you their number. That's really it for now. Any questions?
And what strikes me about that is what it leaves out. It doesn't go into the trust structure. It doesn't reveal account balances. It's not an hour-long meeting.
That's intentional. Three facts, door is open for questions, and Ian says most of the time the call is over in under five minutes. The parent has been dreading it for months and the call itself takes five minutes.
So what's the reaction on the other end of that call? What do adult kids say?
The word Ian uses, and he says it comes up again and again, is relieved. Because grown kids carry this background worry that they almost never say out loud: if something happened to mom and dad, we'd be left guessing. A call that answers who, what, and where doesn't add weight to their day. It takes weight off.
That's a real shift in how to think about it. Parents are protecting their kids from a hard topic, but the protection is actually creating the anxiety. The kids are already worried. The silence doesn't shield them from anything.
And there's a piece of this that Ian addresses really openly. Part of why parents put it off is this superstition, not quite rational, that talking about the plan makes it feel more real, more imminent, like it summons something. And he's pretty gentle but clear that it doesn't work that way. The plan just sits there, ready, the way a smoke detector sits on the ceiling doing nothing until the one day it matters.
Nobody feels less safe because they know where the fire extinguisher is.
Exactly. And you don't feel like you're inviting a fire by having one on the wall.
I want to talk about the multi-child situation for a second, because I think that's where things can get complicated fast. What does Ian say about how to handle it when there's more than one kid?
He's pretty direct: tell them all, ideally together or within the same week, and say the same thing to each of them. The version of this situation that causes real friction later isn't the choice of who's executor. It's one sibling finding out from another sibling, months or years down the road, that they weren't told anything at all. That's where resentment grows.
So the problem isn't the information itself. It's the inconsistency. One kid was let in and another wasn't, and that gap is what does the damage.
Right. A short group call, a family dinner where you say the same three facts to everyone at once, that closes the gap before it even has a chance to open. And Ian's suggestion for families where the dynamics feel a little tender, where you're not sure how to start, is to raise it with your attorney or your advisor before you make the call.
Which I think is a really reasonable place to land if the family has some history or some tension that makes these conversations harder. You don't have to figure out the approach entirely on your own.
And that's part of what advisors do in this kind of work. Not just the documents behind the conversation, but helping families think through how to have it. Our team at American Retirement Advisors handles this kind of thing regularly. If you're not sure how to open the conversation with your kids, that's a completely legitimate thing to bring to your advisor.
I want to go back to something you said earlier about the executor role, because I think there's a layer we haven't fully dug into. The article is mostly about the communication side, but there's a practical question underneath it: is the executor always the right person to also hold the power of attorney? Are those usually the same person?
Ian mentions them as distinct roles in the article, and he specifically notes that the person holding medical and financial power of attorney might or might not be the same as the executor. But the exact considerations for who should serve in each capacity, that's really a question for your specific attorney and your advisor, because it depends on family structure, geography, the nature of the assets, a lot of factors. I'd write that one down and ask your team directly.
That's a good note for listeners to take away. These roles sound similar but they operate at different moments and under different circumstances, and the decision about who fills them should probably be a deliberate one, not just defaulting to the oldest kid or whoever lives closest.
And once you've made that decision, whatever it is, the conversation with your family is actually simpler. You're not explaining why. You're just telling them what. Who, what, and where.
The article also connects this to an inheritance conversation, which I found interesting. There's a line about how if part of what you're protecting is an inheritance, the conversation pairs naturally with having a place to keep it, and there's a mention of something called the BeneficiaryBox. What is that?
Ian mentions it as where families gather what the plan will one day hold, so that the person you're calling, the executor, the person who gets that five-minute phone call, has more than just a name to work from. He says there's a full day coming in this series dedicated to that specifically. So we'll get into it more tomorrow.
This is day three of the run Ian's been calling The Fridge List, and I want to make sure we give context to that, because there's a stat at the end of the article that really sets the stakes.
Fifty-six percent. In the 2026 survey that opened the series, fifty-six percent of Americans have none of the five core estate documents signed. Not one. And Ian's pointing out that beyond that, there's an unmeasured number of families who do have the documents but have never told anyone where they are. So you've got two separate populations who are vulnerable here.
And today's focus is on the second group. The people who did the work. Who have the plan. But it's sitting in a drawer or a safe and nobody in their family knows it's there.
Which is a fixable problem. That's what I keep coming back to. If you're in that second group, you don't need an attorney appointment or a new document. You need one phone call. The article's version of your next fifteen minutes is really practical: pick the child or children who need to know first, usually the executor and the backup. Say the three facts. Stop there. You don't owe them the contents, only the map.
And if the documents themselves aren't fully organized yet, Ian suggests that's a softer place to start. He mentions a guidepost called Before Death Do Us Part about getting affairs in order while you're both still here to do it together.
So there are really two entry points depending on where you are. If your documents are done, the next step is the call. If your documents aren't organized yet, start there first, get things in order, and then have the call.
I keep thinking about the parents who are listening to this right now who have been meaning to have this conversation and just haven't. Maybe they've had the legal work done for two or three years. Maybe they've told themselves they'll bring it up at Christmas, and then Christmas comes and it feels like the wrong time.
There's never a natural moment. That's the whole point. The moment has to be created. And the thing that Ian's article does really well is it shrinks the conversation down to its smallest possible version. Three facts. Five minutes. You don't have to explain the whole estate plan. You don't have to talk about everything today. You just have to hand over the map.
And the kids on the other end of that call are going to feel better after it, not worse.
Relieved. That's the word. They were already carrying the quiet worry. You're not creating a burden, you're lifting one.
I think the thing I'm going to carry away from Ian Schaeffer's piece today is that the avoidance isn't really about not knowing what to say. It's about the weight the conversation feels like it carries. And once you realize the kids are going to feel relieved, not burdened, it changes the whole calculation.
And when the conversation is really just three facts and five minutes, the dread doesn't fit the task. The dread is a mismatch with what the call really is.
If you've been putting this off, today is genuinely a good day to make that call. And if you want some help thinking through how to start it, especially if your family situation has any complexity to it, that's exactly the kind of thing our advisors work through with families all the time. You can reach our team at American Retirement Advisors and have that conversation before you have the conversation with your kids.
And if your documents aren't fully organized yet, that's a fine place to start too. We wrote a guidepost called Before Death Do Us Part about this. It's at no cost to download and it helps you figure out what needs to be in place before any of the other conversations can happen.
Tomorrow we're back with day four of The Fridge List, which is all about putting everything somewhere your family can find, and that's going to get into the BeneficiaryBox specifically. So come back tomorrow for that one. For now, go make the call. It's smaller than you think, and the people on the other end of it are going to feel better for having received it. We'll see you tomorrow.