By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
According to Caring’s 2025 Wills and Estate Planning study, the number of Americans with a will is on the decline, from 33% in 2022 to just 24% in 2025. When asked why, over 30% claim they don’t have enough assets to pass down. But even if you’re not a millionaire or billionaire, you don’t want to be caught without a plan here. And here with some advice, we’ve got Laura Cohen, who is the estate planning attorney, attorney and founder of Two Hour Lifestyle Lawyer and the author of the new playbook and book Lifestyle lawyer Resolution. Great to have you here in studio with us, Laura. We got to know, what can the average American learn about estate planning from an individual, say like Warren Buffett?
01:22 Laura Cohen
Yeah, so, uh, Warren Buffett has recently updated his estate plan, is my understanding, and I think that this is a really good way to illustrate to people, um, that estate planning is not something you just do once, right? It’s something you get in place, hopefully when you’re younger and you’re just starting a family or you’re buying your first home, but then your life is going to change, the laws going to change, your assets are going to change. All of these things are going to change over time. So do what Warren Buffett is doing, right? Update it continuously. I believe he’s in his 90s and he’s still tweaking.
02:33 Speaker A
Yeah. And so with that in mind, and some of the good things that we’ve been able to take away from how Warren Buffett is navigating his own estate planning, much larger scale than many of us, but on the other side of that, you have some, some horror stories, unfortunately. What are some of the mistakes, we should classify them as, that you see people make?
03:20 Laura Cohen
Yeah, some of the big mistakes that we see, number one, thinking you don’t need an estate plan. Right? And this is the number one that we hear, the number one thing that we hear. I don’t have enough money for an estate plan. And the thing that I would love to get across is that, you know, estate planning really benefits everyone. Uh, this is why I think people struggle to write the check because they don’t understand, well, what am I getting? Um, but it benefits everyone, whether you’re nominating guardians for your children, or you’re saving on estate taxes, or you’re just ensuring that your family’s, um, privacy is kept intact after you pass away. There’s a lot of problems that estate planning solves, and a lawyer can help with that.
04:25 Speaker A
You actually recommend that people avoid AI generated or online wills. Why, why is that?
04:37 Laura Cohen
I do recommend that they avoid it, and I think there’s a lot of reasons. Number one, it may not be, um, done properly, right? We’re looking at the outcome here. We’re not just looking at, well, does this document look legal and official, right? The legal language matters. Um, how it’s executed and signed matters, or else the court’s not going to accept it. So, um, the legal language may not be what you want, it may not be executed properly. And the last thing I’d like to say as well, is that this is really something, um, it’s a lifelong endeavor, right? So this is the kind of thing that you want to be forming a relationship with an attorney over your life, kind of like how you go to the dentist every year, you go to the doctor, you want to see your lawyer every year. What’s changed? Maybe it’s just the laws that have changed.
05:45 Speaker A
Certainly.
05:47 Laura Cohen
Right? And if those have changed, you’re going to need to get new documents, maybe.
06:00 Speaker A
And so how have we seen different generations look across will generation differently and making sure that, as one of our guests put it earlier this week, when you step out of life, that everything is ready to be passed on correctly.
06:32 Laura Cohen
What we’re seeing is, for a long time, the will was the main document. And that’s what everyone’s heard of. I need to have a will. Um, a will is great. It doesn’t do everything. It doesn’t solve a lot of the problems that people think, I think are solved by a will. So a better idea might be a living trust, and this is just going to depend on you and your family and your assets. Um, but a living trust solves all the same problems as a will, while also avoiding probate court, um, maybe avoiding taxes. There’s some different things that you can do.
07:36 Speaker A
Laura, thanks so much for joining us in studio, breaking this down.
07:42 Laura Cohen
Thank you.