Recently I walked into our office building and saw an estate planning attorney I know rushing out. “Going to the hospital to get documents signed,” he said, short of breath. And clearly, this was not his first time with this type of emergency.

Waiting until the last minute to create or update your estate plan – your last will, living trust, advanced directive, and powers of attorney for financial and health care decisions – is a bad idea.

It’s easy to understand why many people don’t want to create an estate plan or review what they have. While we all know we will die, many of us prefer to ignore that inevitability. We prefer to assume death is years away – so why prioritize (and pay for) estate planning now?

But it’s also easy to understand why delaying is sub-optimal. If you don’t have an estate plan, you could die or become incapacitated before you get around to creating one. That means your family must guess what kind of hospital care you want, figure out how to pay for your expenses from your accounts (or lend you the money), deal with the time-consuming legal process known as probate, or be in the middle of an ugly argument between heirs about who gets what.

Waiting too long could also mean that the people or non-profits who will receive your inheritance are not the recipients you wanted to name – perhaps because your living trust is years old, and your intentions have changed. Or it could mean you make “death bed decisions” which are hurried and emotional.

Reviewing and refreshing your estate plan every few years is not hard, and it’s a healthy exercise. You may look at your documents and decide they are all good – no need for any changes. Or you may realize you need updates. If so, take care of it without delay.

And oh, by the way … if you need to hire an attorney, budget a few months for this exercise. Many estate planning attorneys get busy with – you guessed it – the kind of emergency I mentioned at the outset.

It’s easy to put off estate planning. Please don’t.