No estate plan? You're in the majority. Here's the plan Tennessee has for you instead.

The numbers

Most adults have no estate plan at all. In the most recent national survey, only one adult in four has a will, and only one in eight has a living trust. The share with a will is down from a third just three years earlier, and it's falling. Gallup's count, which asks the question a little differently, has never found more than about half of adults with a will in thirty years of asking. Whichever count you use, the people without a plan are the majority.

And most of them intended to make one. Asked why they haven't made a plan, the most common answer, every year since the survey began asking, is the same: "I just haven't gotten around to it." Forty-three percent say exactly that. One in five has talked to a loved one about their wishes. One in six has started researching online. They're not against it. They're in the middle of it, and have been for years.

Sources: Caring.com, "2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study" (with YouGov; 2,500+ U.S. adults): 24% have a will and 13% a living trust in 2025, down from 33% with a will in 2022; 43% of those without a will "just haven't gotten around to it," the most common reason every year since 2022; 20% have talked to a loved one about their wishes and 16% have begun researching online. Gallup, "How Many Americans Have a Will?" (May 3–18, 2021): 46% of U.S. adults have a will, within the range Gallup has found since 1990.

Can we be honest about the real reason?

Nobody talks about estate planning. Everyone says "I'll get to it one day," and the day never comes, because underneath it we think we're invincible, or we just don't want to think about dying. At Vanderpool Law we get that. It's a hard subject. But it isn't one you're incapable of planning for, and here's the proof: you already do it, every day, and you don't flinch.

You have homeowner's insurance because there could be a fire, a tornado, straight-line winds. You have car insurance with medical coverage because every time you pull out of the driveway, somebody could hit you. You never think of those policies as grim. You think of them as sensible. You looked at the worst thing that could happen to your house and your car and made a plan for it, and then you got on with your life.

An estate plan is the same decision, about you. If something happens to the house, you're protected. If something happens to the car, you're protected. If something happens to you, with no plan, your family isn't. You're built for this. You just haven't thought about it in those terms.

"I don't have enough to bother with." The second most common reason in the survey, and the one we'd most like to argue with. The plan isn't about how much. It's about who signs the deed on the house, who talks to the bank when you can't, who decides at the hospital, and whether your family does any of that in a courtroom. A modest house is still a house in probate.

"That's for rich people." It isn't. In Gallup's numbers, the households earning the least are half as likely to have a will as the households earning the most, which means the families who can least afford a court proceeding are the ones most likely to end up in one. Estate planning was built for everybody. It just got marketed to the wealthy.

Sources: Caring.com, 2025 study (procrastination and "don't feel they have enough assets to leave anyone" are the reasons given by 56% of those without a will or trust; nearly a quarter say nothing could motivate them to start); Gallup, 2021 (30% of adults in households earning under $40,000 a year have a will, versus 61% in households earning $100,000 or more). The insurance comparison is ours.

"I have a will, so I'm done."

Most people who have a will think that's the finish line. It's the first step. And here's the part nobody explains: in Tennessee, a will by itself sends your family down the hardest road the law offers. Everything in your name goes to probate court. Your grieving spouse or children hire a lawyer, open a public file, publish a notice to your creditors, and wait out the creditor period before they can sell the house or move the money. The will tells the court what you wanted. It doesn't spare them the court.

And a will does nothing on the days an estate plan is really for: the day you can't make a decision, and the day the doctors need to talk to someone about your care and you're not available. Those take a durable power of attorney and a healthcare directive, and most "I have a will" families have neither.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If you have a will, you've taken a hundred of them, and you're thinking in the right direction. There's just so much more you can do for the people you love, and it isn't hard.

Sources: Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-306 (notice to creditors and the claim period in every probate estate); § 34-6-105 (a power of attorney ends at death, so it only matters while you're living); § 68-11-1803 (the healthcare agent acts when you can't). "The hardest road the law offers" is our description of probate compared with a funded trust; the wills and living-trust pages lay it out with the statutes.

The plan the government wrote for you

Do nothing, and Tennessee doesn't leave a blank. It fills in every decision with a default, and each default has a page on this site explaining it. Who inherits: a list in the statute, starting with your spouse and children in fixed shares, which can leave a surviving spouse sharing the house with the kids. Who handles your money if you can't: nobody, until your family asks a court to appoint a conservator. Who decides at the hospital: whoever the hospital identifies from a list, in the law's order, not yours. How the house gets to your children: through probate court, after the creditor period, with a lawyer and a public file.

None of that is malicious. It's a reasonable plan for a person the state has never met. The question is whether you'd pick it for your own family, knowing what you know. Most people, once they see it written out, wouldn't.

Sources: Tenn. Code Ann. § 31-2-104 (intestate succession: a surviving spouse with children takes a child's share or one-third, whichever is greater); §§ 34-1-101, 34-3-102 (conservatorship by court petition); § 68-11-1806 (the hospital's surrogate list); § 30-2-306 (the creditor period every probate estate waits through). Each is explained on its own page, linked below.

This isn't for rich people. This is for everybody.

A plan at Vanderpool Law is all the documents you need to cover about 99% of everything that could happen, and nearly all of it comes out of a 30-minute conversation. Who acts for you at the bank when you can't. Who decides at the hospital, and what you'd want them to decide. Who gets the house and the accounts, without a courtroom. The deed that puts the house where the plan says it is. The same for a family with one house as for a family with five. Don't get us wrong: sometimes we have to go a little deeper and do some research. The family with properties scattered all over the United States took longer than 30 minutes. But that's the exception. For most people the decisions turn out to be simple and obvious once somebody asks the questions, and it doesn't take much of your life.

And the truth is, it's just not that expensive. Don't get us wrong: we've seen plenty of other places charge a small fortune to set all of this up, and we don't think that's a good idea. We'd rather encourage people to take the first step. Vanderpool Law's trust package is affordable, priced for the people the surveys describe: the family with a house, a car and a retirement account, who have been meaning to do this for ten years. We don't print a price because it depends on your situation. We do print this: the 30 minutes and the plain-English summary are complimentary, and you'll have your number before you decide anything.

Source: our own practice and fee practice. "Trust package" and what's in it are described on the living-trust page.

Built for the people who never got around to it

Here's how we do it, because the way it's done is the reason people never finish. Thirty minutes, where we just talk: your family, your house, what you'd want. The answers are usually easier than people fear; most of them are obvious once the question is asked out loud. Then a plain-English summary of what your plan would look like, before you've paid anything. If you say yes, we draw the documents and explain each one in a page you can actually read, and you sign them in one sitting, in front of our notary, so they're done. Not a project. A conversation and a signing. If you already have something in a drawer, bring it: Vanderpool Law will always take a look and tell you straight whether what you have is good or bad.

Source: our own practice.