My Mock Death is Today
This year it’s December 18, 2023.My belief is the single greatest act of kindness I can accomplish is to have an incredibly detailed written process ready to go in the event of my untimely death.Yes, it’s kind of morbid, and difficult to think through, yet I’ve been doing it for 15 years ― every single year in either November or December ― after which it’s randomly announced to my team close to the day of my supposed demise.My death would be unusually complicated in comparison with most people’s. I’m the Executive Chairman at one of the largest construction companies in the United States, and we also operate a real estate development business with fund management, multiple special purpose entities and hundreds of partners. There are also multiple foundations and charitable commitments to consider, as well as an extended family with four married children, nine grandchildren and one on the way. Friends and legacy partners and my late wife Ellen’s family and Jane’s family are high on the list of my responsibilities. I’m still engaged in multiple outside organizations as well, although I’ve stepped back from a good number of outside interests to focus on my personal foundation for a while. Ellen may no longer be with us physically, but she remains with us in spirit. We met in junior high school and a lot of people know that the first time I saw her I decided I was going to marry her. It wasn’t as simple as that, but we did in fact get married when we were 25 years old and were married for 25 years before she passed to the heavens from a genetic disease. She was an amazing human being, and is still remembered very fondly by everyone who knew her. The idea of a mock death first occurred to me a couple of years after Ellen was diagnosed with a terminal genetic disease. Two years after that I concluded that we already had a pretty complicated estate, and we didn’t have a very good plan. We decided to create a scenario where I died, just to see where all the chips would fall. I didn’t like what I learned and where I saw the chips rolling and sliding off the table. Since then, I’ve completed this exercise every year and sleep better and feel like a kinder human being as a result. At the same time, I’ve had many friends who, sadly, have passed away during that time frame. My CFO was hit and killed by a car while training for a marathon before the Great Recession, and it turned out he had an unsigned estate plan sitting toward the back of his desk. Another of my partners, a CPA by training, also died without a plan and with his family unaware of the complexity of his estate. I have many friends whose spouses don’t know where the important papers are, are in the dark about where the money comes from or how it goes out, and don’t even know how to pay their own bills at home.
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