CALF_News_June_July_2018

18 CALF News • June | July 2018 • www.calfnews.net CALF ANIMAL HEALTH Chuteside Manner EXPLORING THE FRONTIER OF ANIMAL HEALTH The High Risk of Complacency By Patti Wilson Contributing Editor T his month’s Chuteside Manner will digress from cattle health and focus on a dirty job. Specifi- cally, I am talking about making wills, family transition of farms and dealing with heirs who have fled agricul- ture for a life in town. To be clear, we will consider this a human health related article geared toward responsibility and satisfaction. Having successfully crept up toward retirement age, I have buried my share of family. I have seen others do as much, and observed varied results, including contentment, backlash or controversy arising from folks who have either died with wills, or not. It is never, and never will be, anything but a controversial subject. LEFT: What kind of legacy will you leave behind? A well-rooted estate plan can allow your family to flourish and grow. What’s prompted my outburst on these matters comes from the culmina- tion of personal experience. My father was a kind man who always set a good example for his family. I realized after his passing that perhaps the finest thing he did for us was to have his business affairs in order at the time of his death. He had given us clear instructions on how to proceed without him, had a current will in place and, most important, told us not to be afraid. Let me add that this was all done long before he became ill. His plans were followed explicitly until 11 years after his death; natural evolution of family circumstances led my sister and me to decide to “split things up.” It was an amicable decision, arrived upon by our family units. That doesn’t mean it was easy We worked and stewed for the better part of a year on how to make the split. Careful and repeated calculations were necessary, and always with our dad’s intent in mind. Things had to be equal, and things had to work long term. Having a sister with no agricultural interests was a factor, as was the fact that 10 family members had to sign off on all agreements. Me, my sister, our children and all spouses. Now, can you imagine getting 10 adults to agree on anything? We did, but it took several lawyer meet- ings, hours of phone calls and hundreds of miles on our vehicles. We are all still on good terms and doing well. I consider myself lucky for my extended family. In the past several months, my husband and I made new wills. After Dad’s estate split was completed, we were frankly tired. I called it “lawyered out” and not anxious to dive into another legal project. But we did, however, and gratefully we are now current on business. Why not? Why don’t people make wills? First, we have to acknowledge our mortality. Then we have to accept it. Then, we have to work on unpleasant details that take a fairly large amount of time. It’s much easier to shove our decisions onto a sur- viving spouse and a probate court, but in my opinion, that’s a careless thing to do. The state probate court will be happy to take a share of your estate to cover their expenses, and you don’t even get to say what happens to your assets. Yet, a large majority of people over the age of 30 don’t have wills, and fewer have any kind of estate plan in place. Recognition of children with sweat equity in your farm or ranch can lead to anxiety among siblings who have left rural areas for a non-agricultural life. This is a real and crucial problem for almost every farm family, and one that is easily recognizable because of the volatil- ity it creates. Fair does not always mean equal, but fairness should always prevail in estate planning.