#324 The Estate Plan Most Physicians Have But Haven’t Updated in a Decade ft. Peter Kim, MD
In this episode, Dr. Peter Kim opens up about a colleague who passed away suddenly, and how it forced him to finally check his own estate plan, which turned out to be years out of date. If you signed your documents once and haven’t touched them since, this episode breaks down exactly what’s probably wrong, from an unfunded trust to outdated beneficiaries that quietly override everything else.
He also covers the piece most general attorneys miss for physicians specifically, and why it matters even more once you own real estate or a business. Tune in!
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Episode Highlights
Now, let’s look at what we discussed in this episode:
- Why This Topic Matters
- Finding His Own Outdated Estate Plan
- The Core Documents
- Power of Attorney, Healthcare Directive, and Beneficiary Designations
- What Physicians Often Miss
Here’s a breakdown of how this episode unfolds.
Episode Breakdown
Why This Topic Matters
Peter opens with a story about a colleague who died suddenly in his early 50s. The guy was healthy, active, went mountain biking one day and never came home. He had kids in high school, and Peter says the news hit their whole department hard.
Going to the funeral got Peter thinking about his own mortality, not in an emotional way, but a practical one. Would his family actually be okay if something happened to him tomorrow? Not just emotionally, but financially and legally. Would they have documents that said what he actually intended, or what his wife would want them to say?
That question sent him digging up his own estate plan, and what he found kicked off the rest of the episode. He frames this as the reason most physicians need to hear this episode, because an estate plan isn’t something you set once and forget. Life moves faster than the paperwork does.
Finding His Own Outdated Estate Plan
When Peter pulled his estate plan, he realized it was written before his second child was born. It had been sitting untouched since early in his career. He points out how easy it is to treat an estate plan like a checkbox: see the attorney once, sign the papers, file it away, done.
The problems weren’t dramatic, but they were real. His second child didn’t exist yet when the document was drafted. His real estate portfolio and some of his businesses weren’t even part of the picture. One of his accounts still listed a beneficiary he probably wouldn’t choose if he sat down and thought about it today.
None of this happened because he was careless, it happened because life kept moving while the document stayed frozen. He argues this problem hits physicians harder than most people, since a doctor’s financial life can change dramatically in just ten years: kids, real estate, new businesses, growing net worth. Every one of those events should trigger a review, but almost nobody actually does it.
The Core Documents
Peter walks through what a basic estate plan typically includes, starting with the will. Most people know a will decides where your stuff goes when you die, but he points out the catch: it goes through probate, a public court process that can take over a year and cost money. Relying on a will alone means leaving your family to deal with all of that after you’re gone.
The next piece is a revocable living trust, which is designed to skip probate entirely. Assets move directly to beneficiaries without going through court, and it’s faster and more private. But Peter says the mistake he sees constantly, and admits to making himself, is a trust that exists on paper but was never actually funded.
That means the house is still titled in someone’s personal name, the bank accounts and brokerage accounts were never retitled, and rental property sits under an LLC that isn’t tied into the trust. When that happens, everything ends up going through probate anyway, and the trust becomes a document doing absolutely nothing in a drawer.
Power of Attorney, Healthcare Directive, and Beneficiary Designations
Peter moves into the durable power of attorney, which names who makes financial decisions if you’re incapacitated but still alive. He points out that most people named someone 10 or 15 years ago and never revisited whether that person still makes sense. Then there’s the healthcare directive, a separate document naming who makes medical decisions and what your end of life wishes are, something physicians understand better than most but still often forget to update.
The part he spends the most time on is beneficiary designations, which he calls the thing that quietly overrides everything else. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and certain bank or brokerage accounts don’t follow the will or the trust at all. They go directly to whoever is listed as the beneficiary, no matter what the rest of the estate plan says.
He describes hearing versions of the same story over and over: someone spends real money updating their trust, but their 401k still lists an ex spouse, a parent who already passed, or kids as beneficiaries with no age restriction, meaning an 18 year old could inherit everything with zero structure. His advice is simple. Log into every account with a beneficiary field, check who’s listed, and fix it today rather than putting it off.
What Physicians Often Miss
Peter gets into the piece he says general estate attorneys usually miss for physicians specifically, which is how complicated a doctor’s financial life actually gets. If you own real estate, those properties need to be titled correctly, and the LLC holding them needs to actually be referenced inside the trust. The same logic applies to business interests: who inherits it, and is there a buy-sell agreement in place if something happens to you.
He also brings up malpractice exposure for anyone still practicing, saying estate planning needs to account for that risk too. His takeaway is that this isn’t a job for a general attorney who does wills on the side, it’s a job for someone who specifically works with physicians or high net worth professionals holding real estate and business interests.
After finding his own outdated plan, Peter called his attorney and ended up needing two separate meetings to sort everything out. Nothing catastrophic came up, but there were real gaps that could have caused serious problems for his family. He closes by circling back to his colleague, saying the kindest thing you can do for the people you love is make sure they’re not left with a legal and financial mess on top of everything else, and that pulling out your own estate plan today is a smaller task than most people assume.
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