An Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada report, “Succession Planning on Canadian Farms,” refers to a 2019 Farm Financial Survey by Statistics Canada that showed most of the surveyed farm owners (81 per cent) had a will in place. However, the percentage was much smaller (58 per cent) for farmer owners under 40 years of age.
Why aren’t more younger farmers getting their wills done? For some, it could be a lack of information about the process, or uncertainty about where to start. Here are some tips that could help.
Please note, I am not a lawyer and do not give legal advice. This article is intended to help you get ready for effective communication with your lawyer about writing a will.
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Consider new ideas on the farm with a learner mindset
When people want some influence and agency to try something new, and are faced with “This is the way the grandparents always did it,” enthusiasm and creativity can be dampened.
Research
Find a lawyer you like. You could ask your farming friends which legal professionals have served them well. You can also go to the Canadian Association of Farm Advisors directory to find advisors who understand agricultural families.
Many lawyers now work on Zoom and you can sign legal documents digitally, so it’s easier than ever to find the best fit. You will need three appointments to draft, review and sign a new will.
Find a binder. Grab a pad of paper or open a new document on your computer to take notes.
Think
Who do we want as the executor of our will? Do they live in our province? Would they work well with our accountant? Will the executor keep track of details and keep the family informed? It’s important to make sure you confirm your executor wants the job. You can contact me for tools to stimulate your thinking. Go to elainefroese.com/contact and ask for “wills tools,” which includes an executor checklist.
When my father was showing signs of memory loss, yet was still deemed competent by his lawyer, we were able to simplify the number of executors and smooth the executor process. Wills must be updated whenever there is a significant change in your intentions or family events such as a death, divorce or purchase of major assets.
Do you have a designated power of attorney? It may be your spouse, but you may also want an alternate. We have included our successor son as our power of attorney. This came in handy when my husband had a harvest accident in 2017 that landed him in trauma care.
Do you have special possessions you want to pass on to certain family members or friends? I have asked, and no one wants my stuff. This may surprise you when you start asking.
Give
Consider charitable contributions and gifts in your will. If you contribute to a lot of charities, researching the work of abundance.ca can make giving easier.
In conflict resolution we talk about being clear with your intentions. In some wills, it is appropriate to provide an explanation for why certain decisions have been made. To help prepare for this, you can write a script for what you’d like to say when you meet with your family to explain your will.
Discuss
Open communication is important when it comes to people’s expectations. Being clear is kind. Many farm owners may avoid making wills because they want to avoid family conflict. Having a third party facilitate this discussion can help you get harmony through understanding.
In July 1998, I had the opportunity to share my expectations with my farming parents and my farming brother and non-farm siblings. This event was attended by a tax specialist and the founder’s accountant.
When my mom died unexpectedly six weeks later, it was helpful to have the conversations of the family meeting fresh in mind.
I encourage you to share your will openly with your family. This is 2023, not 1973. Secrets can be traumatizing and very damaging to family dynamics.
Children
Many farmers with young children may be reluctant to get wills done because it’s so hard to pick guardians in the event of your death. I suspect uncertainty over who to choose as guardians is one reason for the lower percentage of farmers under 40 who have wills.
Wills can be updated with additions or supplemental information, which are called codicils, so I recommend you get the basics done now. We chose non-family members as guardians for our children, and when they became teenagers, we let them choose who they’d want to live with if we died during their teen years. It’s important to make sure the guardians agree to the responsibility you are giving them.
Fairness
Fairness in farm transitions seems to be a universal issue, which was evident when I spoke to a group of Mexican farmers and business folks in Cuauhtémoc, Mexico, in February.
While you are jotting down your thoughts and wishes, talk to your spouse and have some private conversations with each of your adult children. Ask, “While we are preparing our estate plan, I am curious to know, what does fairness look like to you? What are you expecting from our estate?”
Many young farmers want an opportunity to have equity in the farm long before the founder’s death. They also realize and appreciate the hard work of their parents and want the founders to enjoy the fruits of their labour and live a decent life, to have time to travel and have fewer responsibilities in the farm business.
These conversations are not nightmares. They can be life-giving once expectations and timelines are clear. A good starting point to transition conversations is my presentation “Finding Fairness in Farm Transition,” which you can find on YouTube.
Warm hands
I write this article knowing a good friend died early this morning. I am reflecting on the gifts she gave me with warm hands, particularly her laughter and her support of our daughter, and her quilts.
Many of you are hanging on to wealth you aren’t able to enjoy but which would really give a leg up to the next generation. My father-in-law and mother-in-law wisely gave land to their non-farm heirs when we as the farm couple bought farm assets. As the farm heirs and successors, my husband and I were given first right of refusal to buy the land.
Folks may think this is difficult to do nowadays because land is so expensive, but there are still ways to provide benefits for heirs through gifts of money, assets or small parcels of land. You could also think about long-term lease or rental arrangements with farm successors. Each situation needs discussion, sharing of intention and vision for the farm to stay intact.
Block time
Block time to start a conversation with your lawyer about your will. Google Calendar is your friend, as is the paper calendar on the kitchen wall. I know a multimillionaire farmer who relies only on his kitchen calendar for time management. His super power is being task oriented and getting things done in a timely fashion. His farm is in the top four per cent of farms in his province, according to his accountant’s benchmarking that my farmer friend sees annually in April.
Life on the farm is a journey and things are constantly changing. The best gift we can give our families is open, loving communication with certainty of timelines and agreements.
The execution of my father’s estate wasn’t a nightmare but was instead a great lesson on having an excellent lawyer and documents readied before the death happened. We all long for the currency of time. We all get to choose how we spend our time and get affairs in order.
Send me a text at 204-534-7466 when you get your will signed. It will make my heart sing.
