Estate planning, the blokes' version

My dad died on a Tuesday in autumn. He had a will. He had it because his accountant had nagged him into one a decade earlier, and even then it was a single A4 page that named my mother and then the three of us in equal shares, and that was it. No advance care directive. No enduring power of attorney. His super nominations had lapsed when he changed funds in 2019 and nobody noticed. We spent four months and about $11,000 in legal fees sorting out what should have taken six weeks and a few hundred dollars. He was a careful man in every other respect. He just hadn't got around to it.

Most men I know are in worse shape than my dad was. No will. No EPA. No advance care directive. Super nominations either non-existent or pointing at an ex-wife from a marriage that ended in 2014. Life insurance held inside super with a beneficiary box that says "estate" by default, which means probate, which means delay and cost. The reasons are predictable. He's busy. He's young (forty-eight is young, apparently). He doesn't want to think about it. The lawyer's office feels like a place you only go when something has already gone wrong.

The work itself takes about three hours of your life. The cost runs $500 to $2,000 with a solicitor for the standard package, less if you DIY through a kit, and the difference between the two depends on whether your situation has any complications. Blended family. Self-managed super. A business. A trust. An overseas asset. Any of those and you want a solicitor, full stop. Standard nuclear family with a mortgage and a super balance, you can probably do a kit if you're disciplined about it.

What you actually need

Five documents. Most men have none. A few have one. Almost nobody has all five.

• Will. Names your executor, lists your beneficiaries, says what happens to your kids if you and your partner both die.
• Enduring power of attorney (financial). Says who can manage your money if you lose capacity.
• Advance care directive (or enduring guardian, depending on state). Says what medical treatment you do and don't want, and who decides if you can't.
• Binding death-benefit nomination on super. Tells your super fund where the money goes. Lapses every three years in most cases unless you make it non-lapsing.
• Life insurance beneficiary nomination. If your insurance is held outside super, this is on the policy itself. If it's inside super, it follows the super nomination.

That's the list. Print it. Stick it on the fridge if you have to.

Why most men have none of these

The honest answer is that we treat estate planning the way we treat the dodgy noise the car has been making for six months. We know it needs sorting. We know it'll cost a few hundred dollars and an afternoon. We keep meaning to book it in. Then the noise gets a bit worse and we turn the radio up.

There's a deeper layer too. Sitting in a solicitor's office signing a document that begins "in the event of my death" is a very specific kind of unpleasant. You are forced to think about your own ending in concrete terms. Who gets the house. Who raises the kids. Whether your brother (the one with the gambling problem) should be anywhere near your executor role. These are not pleasant questions and we are very good at not answering them.

The cost of not answering them, though, falls entirely on the people you leave behind. Your wife, who is grieving, is now also negotiating with the public trustee. Your kids, who are grieving, are watching their mother spend money she doesn't have on lawyers. The estate that you thought would tide them over for five years is being eaten alive by costs that a single afternoon's work would have prevented.

What happens if you die without a will (intestacy)

In Australia, dying without a will means you die "intestate" and your estate is distributed according to the formula in your state's succession act. The formulas vary state by state but the broad shape is similar. Your spouse gets the first chunk (a statutory legacy that ranges from about $350,000 to $500,000 depending on state, plus household effects, plus a share of anything left). Your kids split the rest in defined proportions.

Sounds reasonable until you look at the edges. If you're in a de facto relationship of less than two years and you have no kids together, your partner may get nothing. If you're separated but not divorced, your legally married spouse may inherit. If you have kids from a previous relationship, they share with your current partner in a formula that often produces an outcome nobody would have wanted. The public trustee charges a percentage of the estate to administer it, which can run into tens of thousands of dollars on a modest estate.

And the timing. Probate without a will (technically called "letters of administration") takes longer than probate with a will. Bank accounts freeze. Mortgage payments still come out. Your wife is on hold with Centrelink trying to access the bereavement payment while the estate sits in legal limbo for nine months.

The blended-family complication

If your current household is your second household (or third), the standard kit will not save you. Common pattern: man in his late forties, two adult kids from his first marriage, current partner of eight years, possibly a younger child from the second relationship. He wants his current partner taken care of. He wants his adult kids to inherit eventually. He wants the younger child looked after. These three goals pull in different directions and the will needs to do real work to reconcile them.

Tools you might use here include life-interest trusts (your partner gets to live in the house and benefit from the estate during her lifetime, then it flows to your kids), discretionary testamentary trusts (your executor has flexibility to distribute based on circumstances), and careful super nominations (super sits outside your estate, so a binding nomination to your partner means it never goes through the will at all). This is solicitor territory. Pay the $1,500. It's the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy.

The bench at my parents' kitchen table had a small fork on it the morning after dad died, sitting where he'd left it the previous evening. Mum couldn't bring herself to put it in the dishwasher for about a week. That fork did more emotional work than any document. But the documents did the financial work, and where they were missing, the gaps cost real money. SORT THE PAPERWORK.

What to do this week

Three steps. None of them require leaving the house except step three.

• Inventory what you have. Open a notebook. Write down: do I have a will (when, where), an EPA, an advance care directive, super nominations (lapsed or current), life insurance beneficiaries (who).
• Phone your super fund. Ask them what your current binding nomination says and whether it's lapsing or non-lapsing. They'll tell you in two minutes.
• Book a solicitor. Local generalist, not a city specialist. Tell them you want the standard package: will, EPA, advance care directive. If your situation is straightforward, they'll quote you $500 to $900 all-up. If it's not, they'll tell you and quote accordingly.

Three steps. One afternoon. The version of your wife who is fifty-six and widowed will thank the version of you that booked the appointment.

The pen costs nothing. The hour costs nothing. The afternoon costs less than a service on the car.