There’s really no quick and easy answer to this question, especially since so many women today are both primary caregivers to their family’s children and major breadwinners. However, convincing arguments can be presented on both sides of this debate. For that reason, information is shared below that will remind both men and women of their personal need to contact a Peachtree City estate planning attorney at an early age to provide properly for all of their loved ones.
Reasons Why Men May Need to Hurry and Get An Estate Plan Established
- Men still often earn more than their wives, frequently due to the unfair gender gap in pay equality. This is even noted on the current presidential administration’s website.
“On average, full-time working women earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. This significant gap is more than a statistic -- it has real life consequences.” However you choose to interpret this information, the highest wage earner should always carefully document how his or her estate should be distributed to others upon death;
- Plain and simple: Women still do all of the childbearing, if not rearing of children. Since a woman may have to avoid working during part of her pregnancy – or at least for an extended period of time after a baby’s birth to encourage proper breastfeeding and bonding with the child, the husband needs to be sure he has done all he can to properly plan out his estate in case he predecease his wife, even if he’s planning to handle a significant portion of the children’s caregiving;
- The average American male still doesn’t live as long as his wife. Therefore, if you’re more likely to die before your spouse, you should definitely avoid procrastinating in regards to creating an estate plan. At present, women still usually live five years longer than men. When you bear in mind that a very large percentage of single women take care of their children with little or no child support from men – it’s clear women aren’t living longer due to easier lives regarding health and stress.
Why Women Should Be Careful to Create an Early Estate Plan
Given the fact that women are usually more involved with caring for a family’s young children, they need to be sure someone is properly named as guardian should their husbands fail to step into that role. Furthermore, now that women are so heavily involved in the work force, they control more than half of the wealth in this country. Therefore, women need to make sure that they have an airtight estate plan at all times. As one recent study noted, “women will control two-thirds of the consumer wealth in the U.S. over the next decade and be the beneficiaries of the largest transference of wealth in our country’s history—compelling insight for anyone curious about who’s keeping the U.S. economy going these days.”
Conclusion
Both men and women should contact their Peachtree estate planning attorney without delay to be sure they’re meeting all of their family’s future financial needs – regardless of whether they’re married or single. After all, many elderly parents can often benefit from inheriting from their children during these difficult economic times, should their children predecease them.