Brandon Ayers

I have sat where my clients' families will sit. I settled the estates of my father, my mother, and my brother.

My father died in 2014, in my first year as a lawyer. Weeks after his diagnosis, he told me he did not want to spend his last months in a hospital bed chasing a cure. He wanted to umpire and work in his yard. I told him to fight. He told me that is not how this works. At the end, a doctor asked us about a ventilator. We already knew his answer, because he had told us. I cannot imagine adding to the grief of losing him the burden of guessing what he would have wanted. I have told clients that story hundreds of times.

My mother died suddenly in December 2020. She had gone over her wishes with her doctor, and he followed them. No one in our family had to make that call for her.

My brother died in 2024. Our mother's trust had left everything to the two of us outright, the way many trusts do. Settling it, and then his estate, showed me how much a trust's design matters to the people it is meant to serve.

Since then, I ask every family about each of their children: where they are in life, and what would serve them best. A plan can look after each child. It can also protect the relationship between the brothers and sisters who are left.

My wife and I are raising our two kids. I know what a plan does for a family on its worst day, and what it costs when a piece is missing.