A Note From Z: What This Summer Changed And Why I Updated My Own Estate Plan

Summers in the Roaring Fork Valley have a way of stretching time. The days get long. The rivers run. Soccer practices stack up. And if you are paying attention, you notice that the people and animals you love are not quite the same as they were in May.

This summer was one of those seasons for our family. We added a dog. Our boys grew another inch (or two) and needed a little more from us in different ways. The roles in our marriage and our work shifted as we poured more of ourselves into the practice. And like so many families in this valley, we felt the quiet pull of aging parents. Those conversations start over coffee and end with, “We should probably write some of this down.”

I spend my days helping other people plan for exactly these moments. This summer I had to take my own advice.

A new dog is not “just a pet".

Bringing a dog into the house is joyful and chaotic in equal measure. It is also a legal and practical question hiding in a pile of tennis balls.

Who takes the dog if something happens to both of us on the same day? Who pays for her care? Does the person we would trust with our sons also want, and have the capacity, to take on a high energy companion? Those are not abstract questions. They are the difference between a plan that works and a scramble at the worst possible time.

A good estate plan can name a caregiver, set aside funds, and give clear instructions so the animal you love does not become one more crisis for the people you love.

Relationships change, even the good ones

No marriage, partnership, or family stays frozen in the year the documents were signed. Kids get older. Work changes. One spouse leans harder into the business while the other carries more of the home. Adult siblings start sharing more of the load with parents. Friendships that once felt peripheral become the people you would actually call at 2 a.m.

Those shifts matter legally. Guardians for minor children should be people who still fit your life, not the names you chose when the boys were toddlers. Successor trustees and agents under a power of attorney should be people who are still willing, able, and geographically realistic. Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance do not update themselves when your family story does.

If the people in your plan no longer match the people in your kitchen, the plan is already out of date.

Aging parents change the map.

This summer it was not only our own parents. It was friends’ parents too. A diagnosis here. A fall there. A neighbor quietly looking at assisted living after a parent could no longer live alone. You start to see the pattern. As we get older, dementia and the need for assisted living stop being distant ideas and become a real priority.

The questions come fast. Have our parents set us up for success, or will we be building the plane while we fly it? Do they have the financial means to pay for care, and if they do not, do we? Who has authority to talk to doctors and banks when memory fades? Where would they want to live if home is no longer safe? What happens to the house, the accounts, and the rest of the family if one parent needs years of memory care?

Those are estate planning questions, not only medical ones. A current financial power of attorney and medical power of attorney. A living will that actually reflects their wishes. Beneficiary designations that still make sense. A plan for the home. Honest work around long term care, Colorado Medicaid rules, and whether a trust or other structure was ever put in place to protect assets and keep a healthy spouse or partner from being wiped out.

You cannot force a parent to plan. You can start the conversation with humility. You can also look at your own documents and ask whether they account for the possibility that you may be caring for a parent while you are still raising children. The sandwich generation is not a slogan here. It is Tuesday.

If little or no planning was done for this stage of life, the cost is rarely just money. It is siblings arguing in a parking lot. It is a court process to get authority you needed last week. It is a family making medical and financial decisions without a map. The earlier the documents and the money conversations happen, the more choices remain.

Kids grow. The plan has to grow with them.

A second grader does not need the same supports as a teenager. Interests change. Health and learning needs evolve. The person who made sense as a guardian five years ago may have moved, taken a new job, or simply grown into a different season of life.

If you have a child with additional needs, ADHD, a 504 plan, or a disability that may last into adulthood, the stakes are higher. A standard will is rarely enough. Special needs planning, supplemental needs trusts, ABLE accounts, and careful coordination with public benefits are how you protect a child’s future without accidentally cutting off the help they may need.

Why I sat down with my own documents:

Estate planning is easy to postpone when life is full. Soccer practice. A new puppy chewing a shoe. A parent’s doctor appointment. Another draft of a client trust. The irony is not lost on me. I help people protect what matters most, and my own binder still needed a summer review.

So I did what I ask clients to do. I read the documents as if I had never seen them. I asked whether the names, the backups, the gifts, the pet care, and the instructions still sounded like our actual life in 2026, not the life we were living when we first signed.

Some pieces were fine. Some were not. Updating them was not morbid. It was a kindness to the people who would have to use them.

When should you look at yours?

A simple rule we use in the office: review your plan after any major life change, and at least every three years even if “nothing happened.” This summer offered a cluster of the classic triggers.

• A new family member, including a pet

• Children entering a new stage of school or need

• Shifts in who you trust with money, medical decisions, or kids

• Aging parents, friends’ parents, dementia, and the first real look at assisted living

• Questions about whether there are financial means, and legal authority, to provide care

• Changes in work, the family business, or how you hold property

• A move, a refinance, or a new account that was never titled into a trust

Colorado law and your family’s facts both drift. Documents that were excellent in 2021 can quietly fail in 2026 because an account was never retitled, a beneficiary form still lists an ex, or the only named guardian now lives two time zones away.

The point is not paperwork.

At Mountain Fair this summer I watched kids weave through the crowd, neighbors stop mid sentence to hug, and families take the kind of photos that end up on the fridge. That is the real subject of estate planning. Not forms. Not binders. The people in those pictures.

A current plan is how you tell them, in writing, that you thought about them on an ordinary September afternoon, not only in a crisis.

If this summer changed your household the way it changed ours, you do not need a perfect plan tomorrow. You need an honest look at the one you have, or a first conversation if you do not have one yet.

We are here for that conversation. Fifteen minutes is enough to know whether a tune up, a rebuild, or a simple set of next steps is right for your family.

Z