Creating a will and estate plan while healthy vs. delaying until a crisis
If you act
Creating a will and estate plan while healthy
3.0%
If you don't
Delaying estate planning until a crisis
35%
Percentage who later regret each choice. Bars and full ledger render below.
Financial
Last reviewed 2026-05-13
Evidence quality 3.63/5
Eight-dimension review score against the
quality rubric
. Each dimension scored 1–5.
D1 Source verification
3/5
D2 Source authority & independence
3/5
D3 Regret-rate accuracy
2/5
D4 Source comparability
3/5
D5 Gilovich pattern
5/5
D6 Prose quality
4/5
D7 Caveat completeness
5/5
D8 Sample quality
4/5
Average3.63/5
Proxy data — no direct regret survey exists for this decision. Rates are derived from satisfaction scores and access-barrier data rather than questions that directly asked about regret. See caveats below.
Action regret
Creating a will and estate plan while healthy
3.0%
~3% of people with estate plans feel anxious about it daily; most report less worry, not regret
US adults with estate plans ('planners')
cross-sectional, survey 2025
Inaction regret
Delaying estate planning until a crisis
35%
35% of Americans have experienced (or know someone who experienced) family conflict from lacking an estate plan
US adults, on family conflict tied to absent/incomplete estate plans
cross-sectional, survey 2016
% who regret this choice
Creating a will and estate plan while healthyDelaying estate planning until a crisis
3.0%35%
inaction dominates — Inaction dominates — most regret not acting.
Related decisions
Semantically similar decisions — same territory, different trade-offs.
No survey directly asks people whether they regret making a will, so both sides here rest on harm proxies. On the inaction side, the WealthCounsel Estate Planning Awareness Survey (ORC International, 2,036 US adults, 2016) found that more than one-third — 35% — of Americans have either personally experienced or know someone who has experienced family conflict as the result of not having an estate plan or comprehensive will. On the action side, a Trust & Will survey reported by ThinkAdvisor found that only 3% of people with an estate plan feel anxious about it every day, compared with 14% of nonplanners, and that three-quarters of planners say they worry less because their affairs are organized. The asymmetry runs one way: completing a plan is associated with less worry, while the absence of one is associated with conflict among the people left behind.
The inaction-side harm is partly structural. When a person dies without a will in the US, state intestate succession law determines who inherits, often producing outcomes that would not have been chosen. LegalZoom’s estate-planning reference notes that probate expenses can run between 3% and 7% of an estate’s value and that probate can take anywhere from a few months to several years — costs and delay that fall on the survivors regardless of whether a will exists, but that an estate plan can blunt. The dominant reason people lack a will is not disagreement with the idea but delay: Caring.com’s 2024 YouGov survey found only 32% of Americans have a will, with procrastination (43%) and a belief that they have too few assets to bother (40%) as the leading barriers. Procrastination is the mechanism that converts deferral into permanent inaction.
The main measurement caveat is that the decision-maker — the person who deferred planning — cannot retroactively express regret after death. The 35% captures family conflict that survivors experienced or witnessed, which is a harm proxy rather than the decedent’s own voiced regret. For estate planning more than most decisions, the consequences are borne by the people left behind rather than the person who made the choice, so the standard regret-survey framework maps imperfectly onto the situation. The action-side 3% is also a proxy — daily anxiety about one’s plan — and points the opposite way from regret, since planners report less worry on the whole. The figures come from different surveys and years and are not strictly comparable. What the data establish is a direction, not a precise gap: family conflict from skipping a plan is far more commonly observed than distress from having made one.
Sources: action
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
2/2 sources independently verified verbatim against the cited source
[1]ThinkAdvisor (reporting Trust & Will survey) — Peace of Mind Comes With Estate Planning: Survey
Verified
Reference source
Among people with an estate plan ('planners'), only 3% feel anxious about it every day (vs. 14% of nonplanners), and three-fourths report they worry less because their plans are organized
Excerpt
“"The survey found that 14% of nonplanners feel anxious every day, compared with 3% of planners. Three-fourths of planners reported that they worry less because their plans are organized."
”
Source data from
2025-10-17
Accessed
2026-06-30
Verification
Excerpt independently re-fetched and confirmed word-for-word against the cited source during our grounding audit.
Calculation
ThinkAdvisor (Oct 2025) reporting a Trust & Will estate-planning survey. No published survey directly asks estate-plan completers whether they regret having made the plan, so this is a harm proxy: the 3% of planners who feel anxious about their plan every day is the closest available upper-bound on action-side "regret/distress." The direction is the opposite of regret -- planners report less worry, not more -- so 3% is a conservative ceiling rather than a measured regret rate. Used as the action-side proxy in place of the prior fabricated Caring.com "6%" figure, which does not appear in any Caring.com survey.
[2]Caring.com / YouGov — 2024 Wills and Estate Planning Study
Verified
Primary study
Only 32% of Americans have a will; among those without one, procrastination (43%) and perceived lack of assets (40%) are the top barriers -- i.e. people delay; few who complete a plan cite it as a mistake
Excerpt
“"Only 32% of Americans have a will, a 6% decline from 2023 and the first decrease in estate planning rates since 2020." "While simple procrastination remains the most common barrier to estate planning at 43%, an increasing number of people are deciding to forgo estate planning because they perceive they have too few assets to bother." "In 2024, 40% of Americans say they do not have enough assets to leave anyone, compared to 33% in 2022, a 21% increase."
”
Source data from
2024-03-01
Accessed
2026-06-30
Verification
Excerpt independently re-fetched and confirmed word-for-word against the cited source during our grounding audit.
Calculation
Caring.com partnered with YouGov to survey 2,400+ US adults (2024). The survey measures who has a will and why people lack one (procrastination 43%, perceived lack of assets 40%); it does NOT report any planning- process conflict or "6%" figure -- that statistic, cited in the prior version of this entry, is absent from the source. Used here as authoritative context that the dominant failure mode is delay/non- completion, not regret over having completed a plan. source_type kept as primary_study (YouGov-fielded national survey).
Sources: inaction
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
2/2 sources independently verified verbatim against the cited source
[1]WealthCounsel / ORC International (via PR Newswire) — Half of America Sees Estate Planning as Tool of the Ultra-Rich (WealthCounsel Estate Planning Awareness Survey)
Verified
Primary study
More than one-third (35%) of Americans have personally experienced, or know someone who has experienced, family conflict as the result of not having an estate plan or comprehensive will
Excerpt
“"More than one-third (35 percent) of Americans have either personally experienced or know someone who has experienced family conflict as the result of not having an estate plan or comprehensive will." "The Estate Planning Awareness Survey was conducted online by ORC International among a sample of 2,036 adults comprising 1,014 men and 1,022 women 18 years of age and older. This survey was live on August 4-10, 2016."
”
Source data from
2016-09-22
Accessed
2026-06-30
Verification
Excerpt independently re-fetched and confirmed word-for-word against the cited source during our grounding audit.
Calculation
WealthCounsel Estate Planning Awareness Survey, fielded by ORC International (N=2,036 US adults, Aug 4-10 2016). The 35% is a direct, named-survey figure: the share who personally experienced OR know someone who experienced family conflict from lacking an estate plan. It is a harm proxy for inaction-side regret -- the decision-maker (often deceased) cannot self-report, so observed family conflict is the closest measurable consequence. Replaces the prior "42%" figure, which was attributed to Caring.com but does not appear in any Caring.com survey (the real Caring.com data tracks will ownership and barriers, not post-death family difficulty).
[2]LegalZoom — Estate Planning Statistics to Read Before Writing Your Will
Verified
Reference source
Dying without a will (intestate) hands asset distribution to state law; probate expenses can run 3%-7% of an estate's value and probate can take months to years
Excerpt
“"Dying without a will—also called dying intestate—means that state law ultimately dictates who receives your assets." "Probate expenses can cost between 3% and 7% of an estate's value." "Probating a will can take anywhere from a few months to several years."
”
Source data from
2024-01-01
Accessed
2026-06-30
Verification
Excerpt independently re-fetched and confirmed word-for-word against the cited source during our grounding audit.
Calculation
LegalZoom estate-planning statistics reference. Supplies the mechanism behind inaction-side harm: when a person dies intestate, state law dictates distribution and the estate still faces probate costs (3%-7% of value) and delay. Replaces the prior NOLO source, whose cited "$3,000-$15,000 median additional legal cost" figure and three-sentence verbatim excerpt do not appear on the NOLO page -- that URL is a category/index landing page ("Wills, Trusts & Probate"), not prose. Used as corroborating context, not as the regret rate.
Caveats
Neither side is a direct "do you regret this choice" survey -- no such survey of estate-plan completers exists in the published literature, so both rates are harm proxies. The action-side 3% is the share of people with an estate plan who feel anxious about it every day (Trust & Will via ThinkAdvisor); the same survey finds planners report LESS worry, so 3% is a conservative ceiling on action-side distress, not a measured regret rate. The inaction-side 35% is the share of US adults who have personally experienced or know someone who experienced family conflict from lacking an estate plan (WealthCounsel/ORC International, 2016) -- a regret-adjacent harm proxy, since the decision-maker who deferred is often deceased and cannot self-report. Surviving-family conflict is the closest available measure. The two figures also come from different surveys/years and are not strictly comparable; they establish a direction (inaction harm is far more commonly observed than action regret), not a precise delta. This entry is distinct from the advance-directive-now-vs-later pair, which covers medical directives and living wills rather than financial estate planning. Estate planning regret is most pronounced for parents with minor children, individuals with blended families, and business owners; the relevance is lower for young single adults with minimal assets. Legal frameworks vary by state: will requirements (witnesses, notarization), intestate succession rules, and the legal weight of various document types differ across jurisdictions. The LegalZoom probate cost estimates reflect US averages and will vary substantially by estate complexity and jurisdiction.
