Are You in the Same Estate Planning Boat as Prince?
For those of us who were fans of Prince, the world shuddered to a stop for a few hours on April 22nd 2016 as we tried to grasp the fact that the 1980’s chart-topping singer had died. He was only fifty-seven years old, and according to subsequent reports, he had been dealing with chronic pain for quite some time.
His death made us remember his music and where we were when we first heard those iconic lyrics. Songs like Purple Rain, When Doves Cry, and Let’s Go Crazy will forever be enjoyed as we remember Prince’s contribution to our lives through the medium of music.
For those of us who are careful with our money and plan ahead, the shock that Prince had died was compounded by the fact that he died without a will. This lack of planning on Prince’s part has left his estate up in the air and has left his family without direction in a time of extreme grief and loss.
For the true Prince fans, the difficulty of Prince’s lack of estate planning gets even more perplexing. Prince died with a vault full of unreleased recordings, and only he knew the combination to that vault. This is the kind of information that Prince’s family would have had access to if Prince had simply taken a few minutes to sit down with an estate financial advisor and fill out the pages of Jack Veale’s planning guide, The Sudden Death Checklist.
Added to this confusion is the sheer size of Prince’s estate. Forbes Magazine estimates it to be worth between 150 and 300 Million dollars!
Prince’s bank, Bremer Trust, has now been tasked with the unenviable job of trying to sort out this mess. At this time, Prince’s estate has five people laying claim to it. If the track record of past superstar’s estates is any indicator, this could drag on for decades. For example, Jimi Hendrix’s estate took forty-five years to settle.
At this time, the fact that Prince had no apparent plan in place has left the family in a position of incredible stress. The sad part is that all of this could have been avoided with a simple, comprehensive planning guide.
You owe it to your spouse and family to spend a few hours and prepare an estate plan using The Sudden Death Checklist. Your family deserves the peace of mind that only reliable estate and business continuity planning can bring.
Source: Sudden Death Checklist