Estate Planning Data
Estate Planning Data
A 2020 Caring.com survey of 2,400 Americans found fewer people have wills, trusts, or advance directives than in prior years. Here is what the numbers mean for your family.
Estate planning is one of those tasks everyone agrees matters, yet fewer people are actually doing it. Caring.com partnered with YouGov to survey 2,400 Americans in December 2019 for its annual Wills Survey, and the 2020 results showed a troubling trend: the share of adults with a will or other estate planning document fell nearly 25% since 2017, dropping from 42% to just 32%. Older and middle-aged adults, the group who arguably needs these documents most, saw the sharpest declines. This guide walks through what the survey found, why people put estate planning off, and what a will, trust, and advance directive actually do for a family, so you can turn good intentions into a finished document rather than just another conversation.
Only 32% of Americans have a will, trust, or advance directive, down from 42% in 2017. Cost and confusion, not procrastination, are now the top reasons people cite for not having one.
Caring.com's 2020 Wills Survey found that just 32% of Americans have any estate planning document, down from 42% in 2017 — a nearly 25% decline in three years. A will remains the most common document, held by 23.9% of respondents, followed by a living trust at 13% and an advance healthcare directive at just 6.2%. The trend runs opposite to what you'd expect as awareness of estate planning has grown.
The decline was not evenly distributed. Adults ages 35-54 saw wills drop by more than 25% compared to 2019, and adults 55 and older saw a decrease of about 20%. Adults 18-34 saw only a 1.6 percentage point drop. That means the people statistically closest to needing a will are the ones losing ground fastest, which is the opposite of a healthy trend for families trying to plan ahead.
Income doesn't fully protect against the drop either. In 2019, 61% of people earning at least $75,000 had a will; by 2020, only 45% of the highest earners had any estate planning document in place, a decline of more than 26%. Having the resources to plan and actually completing the paperwork turned out to be two very different things.
The reasons people give for skipping estate planning have shifted. Compared to 2017, the share citing cost as a barrier rose 70%, and the share saying they don't know how to get a will rose 57.5%. Meanwhile, simple procrastination — 'I just haven't gotten around to it' — actually decreased 24% over the same period, suggesting the barrier is shifting from motivation to access.
Roughly 30.4% of 2020 respondents said they skip estate planning because they feel they don't have enough assets to leave anyone. That belief isn't limited to lower earners — more than 10% of people citing this reason had household income of at least $80,000, well above the national median. The perception of not having 'enough' seems to persist even among people with real assets to protect.
This gap between belief and action is stark: 60% of people say estate planning is important, yet fewer than a third have documents in place. Caring.com's data shows people generally understand the value of a will; what's missing is a clear, affordable path to actually creating one.
The survey uncovered a significant racial disparity in access to estate planning knowledge. In 2017 and 2019, Hispanic and Caucasian respondents were within one percentage point of each other on saying they 'don't know how to get a will.' In 2020, that changed sharply: 11.9% of Hispanic respondents cited not knowing how to start, compared to roughly 4% in prior years — nearly a 200% increase.
By contrast, Black non-Hispanic respondents who cited lack of knowledge as their reason actually dropped, from 12% in 2019 to 6.8% in 2020. The uneven movement across groups suggests the education gap isn't shrinking uniformly; for some communities it's widening even as overall awareness campaigns continue.
For families with Spanish-speaking or multigenerational households, this finding is a practical signal: locating bilingual legal aid clinics, community legal services, or attorneys who specialize in explaining the process in plain language can directly close a gap the national data shows is real and growing.
| Document | Takes Effect | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Will | After death | Directing property, debts, and guardianship of minors |
| Living Trust | Immediately, while alive | Larger estates, avoiding probate, keeping affairs private |
| Advance Healthcare Directive | Immediately, if incapacitated | Guiding medical decisions family can't make for you |
Caring.com's survey asked respondents how far along they were in the estate planning process. Nearly 20% said they had talked to a loved one about it, but 61% hadn't started at all. Only 1.6% said they had actually filed paperwork to create a will — a wide gap between discussing the idea and completing the document.
This finding matters because conversation can feel like progress without producing anything usable in a crisis. A hospital or probate court doesn't recognize a family discussion; it recognizes a signed, witnessed document. Families who've talked about who gets the house or who makes medical decisions still have no legal protection until that conversation becomes paperwork.
The survey also found that when asked what age someone should have a will, 30% of all respondents said by age 35 — the single most common answer across every age group. Yet only 8.2% of 18-34 year-olds actually had one, showing that even the group most convinced of an early deadline isn't meeting it.
According to the survey, a will remains the most familiar and most commonly held estate planning document, and for good reason: it can dictate how property is divided, who becomes a guardian for minor children, how debts are handled, and more. For many households, a will alone covers the bulk of what they need.
A will only takes effect after death, which is an important distinction from other planning tools. It doesn't help if you're alive but unable to make decisions for yourself — that's a separate document's job. But for directing what happens to your estate once you're gone, a will is usually the simplest, least expensive place to start.
Families with larger properties, blended households, or anticipated disagreements among heirs may find a will alone insufficient. In those cases, the survey and estate planning attorneys quoted in it point toward a trust as the next document worth considering, particularly to head off disputes before they start.
Unlike a will, a living trust takes effect as soon as it's enacted, not after death — which is where the phrase 'living trust' comes from. Trusts generally suit people with larger estates, significant property holdings, or those anticipating a disability, since they can manage assets during a person's lifetime as well as afterward.
Chas Rampenthal, General Counsel for LegalZoom, told Caring.com that 'the larger the value of the estate, the greater need there is for a living trust,' mainly to avoid probate — a process he describes as potentially long and costly. He also notes a privacy advantage: a will becomes a public court document during probate, while a trust does not become public record after death.
Trusts are more complex and more expensive to set up than a will, which is part of why they're less common in the survey data — only 13% of respondents have one, versus 23.9% with a will. For most families without significant assets or complications, a will may be sufficient, with a trust reserved for cases where probate avoidance or privacy is a real concern.
An advance healthcare directive spells out your wishes for end-of-life care and what should happen if you become mentally incapacitated or unable to communicate. Like a living trust, it takes effect while you're alive, not after death — and it's the document most people misunderstand or skip entirely.
Caring.com's survey found that nearly 1 in 5 respondents (19.3%) don't know what an advance healthcare directive even is, despite only 6.2% of all respondents actually having one. That's a notable knowledge gap for a document specifically designed to protect a family during a medical crisis.
Phillip H. Palmer, a managing executive at The Chestnut Street Group, told Caring.com that an advance directive 'provides guidance for your family and medical professionals' when someone can no longer make their own healthcare decisions, and that it 'takes the pressure of making difficult decisions away from your family members.' For older adults especially, this document can matter as much as, or more than, a will.
Caring.com's survey found that nearly 20% of people get only as far as talking with a loved one about estate planning, while just 1.6% actually file paperwork. That gap between intention and action is the biggest obstacle the data reveals, so the most concrete next step is turning a conversation into a signed document within a defined window, rather than letting it stay an open-ended someday project.
Start with the document that covers the most ground for the least cost: a basic will naming an executor and any guardians, paired with an advance healthcare directive. The survey found nearly 1 in 5 people don't know what an advance directive even is, despite it being what keeps end-of-life decisions out of a family's hands during a crisis.
If the estate includes significant property, a family business, or a strong wish to avoid probate court, bring a living trust into the conversation with an attorney. As LegalZoom's Chas Rampenthal notes in the survey, probate can be long, costly, and a matter of public record, while a trust generally isn't.
Whichever document comes first, set a follow-up date on the calendar, since these survey numbers show that most people stall out after the first conversation. A document filed today protects a family far more than a plan that only exists as a topic everyone agreed to revisit later.
Only 32% of Americans have a will, trust, or advance directive, down from 42% in 2017. Most people already believe estate planning matters — the missing piece is turning that belief into a filed document.
Caring.com's 2020 survey of 2,400 Americans found estate planning moving in the wrong direction: just 32% had a will, trust, or advance directive, down from 42% in 2017, with older adults seeing the steepest drops. The gap isn't really about interest — 60% still call estate planning important — it's about cost, confusion, and, for Hispanic respondents especially, a knowledge gap that nearly tripled since 2017. For families, the fix is concrete: start with a will, add an advance healthcare directive since nearly 1 in 5 people don't even know what one is, and consider a living trust only if the estate is large enough to make probate avoidance worthwhile. Talking about a plan, the survey shows, is not the same as having one on file.
If a parent or spouse has no will, trust, or advance directive and is facing declining health, don't wait for a crisis to force the issue — incapacity can make signing legally binding documents impossible. If a family disagreement over property or care decisions seems likely, involve an estate attorney early rather than after a hospitalization or death makes the process adversarial.