Amanda N. Maurer Miller, PC

Why We Practice Estate Planning Differently - Amanda's Story

On Friday afternoon, April 13, 2018, life changed in an instant. My children’s stepmother texted me that I needed to get to the local hospital emergency department immediately because my children’s father had been diagnosed with brain tumors. We were all in shock. He was 45 years old, a beloved physician himself. I asked, why does this have to happen to him? His response was why wouldn’t this happen to me? He had seen thousands of cases in his internal medicine career, many of which involved unexpected, tragic outcomes. I had those stories, too, from my work as a probate lawyer, but none had ever hit this close to home before. I picked our children up from school and their father and I, along with their two stepparents, told them the worst news we had ever had to relay.

A few days later, my children’s father texted me that he needed to update his estate plan documents. He had never gotten around to it after we had divorced almost five years earlier. He was riding home from a surgery consult and needed to get his affairs in order prior to undergoing major brain surgery. The surgery would confirm the type of cancer and hopefully buy him a few more months of life. After several text exchanges, I regretfully asked him if he could find another attorney to help him. He only had a few days prior to surgery, and I did not want to spend that time on my computer drafting documents and trying to coordinate a last-minute signing when I needed to be mothering our children. I was also weathering my own grief as I faced the reality of losing a life partner, then co-parent, that had been an integral part of my life for 23 years.

Fortunately, he did find an attorney to help him, and he established a revocable living trust. His assets were properly directed into the trust upon his death, and no estate administration case had to be filed with the court. Prior to experiencing this major family loss in May 2019 just 13 months after the initial diagnosis, I had always felt like probate was “not a big deal” in Colorado. As we all tried to adjust to our new reality, I was very grateful I would not have to receive probate notices on my children’s behalf in the mail, talk to attorneys potentially appointed on my minor children’s behalf, or otherwise deal with the court system on top of everything else. If my children’s father had died suddenly with old documents, his estate plan would have had to have been re-written per Colorado statute through a court process. Our children and their stepmother would have been dealing with attorneys and the court system for years. 

A couple weeks after his death, I found out my children’s father had nominated me to take on certain responsibilities in his documents. I wished he would have told me during his lifetime so that we could have had at least one conversation to flesh out the two-dimensional written words. We talked or texted almost every day, yet he never mentioned this directly. I scoured old computer files and the internet to see if I could patch together a video for my children to watch and listen to their dad “in action,” as he always had a lot of bold opinions, theories, and things to say about the world. Although there are pictures, the live videos and recordings are few and far between. Our kids had just turned 12 and 14 when they lost their father.  Having his words recorded on audio or video directed towards them would be priceless now.