It’s often said that the hardest part of parenting is letting go. From the moment they’re born to the day they finally become adults, raising kids is a gradual process of relinquishing control. You start out taking care of literally every single need they could conceivably have, but as they get older, you give them a little more leash… then a little more… then a little more… until before you know it, they’re packing up their things and heading off for college. Where did all the time go?
Of course, the work of parenting doesn’t stop when your kids become legal adults. Nobody is under the illusion that an eighteen-year-old is fully equipped to deal with the trials and travails of the grown-up world. As a parent, you’re always going to be there for them when life knocks them down.
But there’s one area of life where far too many parents—actually, most parents—drop the ball. And that’s when it comes to talking about Aging & End of Life.
The parental blindspot: Aging & End of Life
Look: we get it. Nobody wants to talk about death, especially not with their kids. It’s hard to even think about a time when you won’t be there to take care of them, never mind having a drawn-out conversation about it. That’s probably the reason why half of all Canadian parents haven’t discussed inheritance with their children.
But the simple fact of the matter is this: you are going to die. So is your spouse, and so are all the other people who have helped to raise your children. You know this. Your kids know this too. You’ve all just made a silent pact with one another to avoid this reality.
Avoiding “the talk” — the Aging & End of Life talk, not the sex talk — might feel like the kindest option in the short-term. After all, topics like illness, disability, and death tend to bring people down, and nobody wants to put their loved ones in that kind of emotional state.
The problem is what happens after you die. If you and your kids have never discussed the contents of your Aging & End of Life Plan, that means they’ll be left completely unprepared to face your passing. That can lead to a bunch of unwanted scenarios, like:
1. Your kids are blindsided by your Will
Unless you’ve sat your children down and told them exactly what to expect from your Estate, they are probably going to come into this situation with their own assumptions and expectations for what you are leaving them to inherit. Those expectations may be roughly accurate… but they could also be completely off base, leading to an unwelcome surprise for them.
If you’re a parent to Millennial or Gen Z kids, that means you’re set to be part of the biggest wealth transfer in history. Your adult children may be factoring their expected inheritance into their future financial plans, or they may be counting on inheriting certain assets or pieces of property. If or when that doesn’t happen, they could be thrown for a loop.
You may not know exactly how much you’ll have left for your kids to inherit after you die. That’s fine! You don’t need to give them a precise dollar amount; you just need to set clear expectations with them about how much they are set to inherit after you pass. Make sure to account for things like capital gains tax so that they have a realistic picture of how things will shake out. Otherwise, they may be banking (literally) on a false set of assumptions to support their financial futures.
2. Your kids don’t know your medical wishes
Part of the Aging & End of Life Planning process includes Advance Care Planning — i.e., creating directives to guide your healthcare in the event that you are no longer able to make decisions on your own. That includes creating documents like a Power of Attorney for Personal Care, which gives a designated person decision-making power over your medical care, and an Advance Directive order, which tells medical personnel how you would like to be treated (or not treated) in certain situations.
You should have these documents in place, full stop. But in addition, it’s also crucially important to tell your kids about your Advance Care Plan and your preferences for End of Life care.
Let’s say, for example, that you’ve prepared an Advance Directive telling your healthcare team not to resuscitate you if your body is no longer able to breathe on its own. Imagine you fall seriously ill, and you end up in a situation where this Directive applies. Do you want your kids to find out about your decision in the heat of the moment, when they’re standing by your hospital bed? Or wouldn’t you rather tell them in a calm, peaceful environment, on your own terms, so that they have time and space to process what you’re telling them?
If you skip the Aging & End of Life talk with your kids, there’s also the possibility that they’ll be left in a situation where they’re responsible for you — but don’t know what you would have wanted them to do. Let’s say you’ve appointed your eldest child as your Power of Attorney for Personal Care, but you’ve never actually sat down with them to talk about your wishes and preferences. You may be putting them in a heartwrenching and difficult situation, having to guess at what you might have wanted.
This classic video from Advance Care Planning Australia spells it out loud and clear: love is not enough. No matter how close you are with your kids, or how you all love each other, the only way to guarantee that your loved ones know your wishes is to tell them yourself. (Embed: Love Is Not Enough - Advance Care Planning)
3. Your kids end up fighting over your Estate or healthcare
As we often say at Viive, grief and greed are a destructive cocktail of emotions. When people are mourning the loss of a loved one, it can dredge up unresolved conflicts, old wounds, and complex emotions. More often than you might expect, that leads to family conflict.
You may not know this, but before starting Viive, our Founder & CEO spent about a decade working in Estate litigation. That’s how she knows firsthand how destructive this kind of conflict can be to families. Take it from a seasoned pro: sibling relationships can be (and often are) torn apart by disagreements about a parent’s Estate or End of Life care.
You may not have the power to smooth out decades of complicated familial relationships overnight. But you do have the power to sit your kids down for an open, honest, and vulnerable discussion about what is to come. You — ideally guided by a trained Legacy Coordinator — can create a space for your loved ones to express and process difficult feelings as they come up, while making your own wishes clear. This goes a long way in reducing the odds of conflict after you’re gone.
Planning is the most loving thing you can do
Truly loving your kids doesn’t just mean giving them everything you can and then hoping for the best. It means setting them up to face life’s difficult seasons head on.
When you taught your kids how to ride a bike, you didn’t keep them on training wheels forever. Instead, you took the training wheels away once you felt like they were ready to face the challenge — even though you knew they’d probably fall down a few times before getting the hang of it.
Prepping your adult kids for a future without their parents is exactly the same. By avoiding tough conversations, you’re just keeping them on training wheels forever, leaving them unequipped to deal with the road ahead. The kindest, most loving thing you can give them is honesty and clear communication. The sooner you start the conversation, the more time you’ll have to help them balance without the training wheels.
