In many people’s minds, estate planning stops at the signature.
You draft the will, name the beneficiaries, sign the power of attorney and put the stack somewhere safe. The task is finished, and the worry is supposed to end with it.
That is how planning has been sold for decades. It gets treated as a product you buy once and then store, and the binder in the drawer becomes proof that you were responsible about your money.
The trouble surfaces years later, when somebody else has to open that binder and act on it. That person may have no idea it exists. They may have no idea which account sits where, who is in charge of what, or which choices you already made on their behalf.
Every family assumes it will handle that moment well. Most of the work that goes into an estate plan happens in a lawyer’s office, in private, on the assumption that the people named in it will figure out the rest when they have to.
The people named in it usually have questions long before then, and they tend to stay quiet about it for the same reason their parents do.
New research from Fidelity Investments, released Sept. 17, puts a number on how often that silence holds. The gap it found is wider than almost anyone would guess, and money does nothing to close it.
What the great wealth transfer means for your estate plan
Roughly $124 trillion is expected to change hands through 2048, with about $105 trillion of that flowing to heirs and $18 trillion going to charity, Cerulli Associates projects. Close to $100 trillion of the total will come from baby boomers and older generations.
Money that size does not land as a check. It arrives as retirement accounts, deeds, trusts, insurance policies and tax deadlines, and every piece carries rules that someone has to follow correctly.
Related: Estate planning for solo agers: How to protect yourself
Inherited retirement accounts show the stakes most plainly. Most non-spouse heirs have to empty an inherited individual retirement account (IRA) within a decade of the original owner’s death. Heirs who skip a required withdrawal along the way face an excise tax of 25% on the amount they should have taken, cut to 10% if they correct it inside the window, the IRS explains in Publication 590-B.
A child who does not know the account exists cannot meet that deadline. Neither can a spouse who was never told which adviser holds the paperwork.
That is the gap the new study set out to measure, and it sits in the handoff rather than in the paperwork.
Fidelity research finds a gap between plans and peace of mind
Only 37% of older adults say they have strong peace of mind about their future plans, and more than half of the people who have finished their documents still lack confidence in them, Fidelity Investments reported.
About one-third of parents say they have never openly discussed important future planning topics with their adult children, the study found. Among parents who have never had that conversation, the most common explanation was not knowing how to start it.
Only 21% have communicated a completed estate plan to their children.
Some households keep quiet by design, using tools such as a silent trust that leave beneficiaries uninformed until a trigger date. The research points to something plainer in most homes, with parents citing not feeling prepared, wanting to wait until later in life, or a belief that one earlier talk settled the matter.
More Estate Planning:
- Estate planning tips every blended family needs to know
- After your death, who takes care of your dog?
- Dave Ramsey says this insurance product is horrendous for families
The confidence runs in the wrong direction, too. Nearly two-thirds of parents believe their adult children could take responsibility for their finances, yet few have shared the planning details or talked through the duties those children would be picking up.
“Creating a plan is only part of preparing families for future transitions,” said Timothy Habbershon, managing director and founder of the Fidelity Center for Family Engagement.
Having more money does not buy the calm you would expect. More than 40% of respondents with over $5 million in net worth reported only moderate or low peace of mind, and the wealthiest households were no less anxious about their planning than their less affluent peers, according to the research.
Talking about it does appear to work. Parents who communicate completed plans to family are more than three times as likely to have confidence in their planning. Families the study scores as highly transition ready are four times as likely to report high peace of mind and five times as likely to feel confident about their estate planning.
The sample deserves a note. Publicis Sapient surveyed 654 married or partnered adults age 55 or older with a net worth of at least $500,000 and at least one child 18 or older, with fieldwork running from Nov. 7, 2025 through Jan. 1, 2026.
In my analysis, that screen makes the finding heavier rather than lighter. These are households that already paid for the expensive part of planning, and they still do not feel ready.
How to close the estate plan gap with your adult children
“For many families, preparedness isn’t just about having a plan in place,” said Amanda Lott, head of financial planning and advice products at Fidelity.
She added that the families carrying the most confidence pair their planning with ongoing conversations about goals, responsibilities and expectations.
Where to start the conversation with your family
- Pick one small topic and practice on it, because these conversations get easier with repetition, Fidelity recommends.
- Ask relatives how much peace of mind they have about the current planning, which opens the subject without leading with balances.
- Clarify early who is expected to manage the money, provide care or make medical calls, since family members often hold different assumptions about those roles.
- Put real numbers in front of everyone using planning tools, so the discussion stays specific instead of emotional.
- Bring in a financial professional when the family dynamics make the conversation hard to run alone.
All of it happens without rewriting a single document. The work is simply telling the people named in those documents what you have already decided, which costs nothing beyond the discomfort of raising it.
My read of this data is that the unease tracks with silence rather than with the size of the balance. The households in the study had lawyers, advisers and signed instruments. What they lacked was a second person who understood the plan well enough to carry it.
If you finished your estate plan this year, treat the conversation as the last required step. Put a date on the calendar, tell your children where the documents live, and name who does what when the time comes.
Related: Your estate plan may be missing an important family member
