What is incapacity planning? (The ice cream sandwich metaphor)
- Apr 23
- 2 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Incapacity planning is preparing for the moment when you can no longer make your own medical or financial decisions — before the freezer breaks.
Three distinct flavors of kids. Frozen. No one talks. Then the freezer breaks. And no one knows who's chocolate anymore.
What does the ice cream sandwich have to do with estate planning?
The Kim family was a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich. Three adult kids. Chocolate. Vanilla. Strawberry. Each busy. Each distant. Squeezed between two wafers that looked solid.
Frozen solid. Perfectly contained. Everyone knew their place. No one asked if the wafers were cracking.
Mom had a bad hip. Dad needed dialysis. The kids took turns. No one lived too far away. They talked. But only when necessary.
They shared Google calendars for medical appointments. Another for the kids' sports and holidays. Another for their social lives.
That one was always empty.
What happens when the freezer breaks?
Then Mom fell. Hip fracture. Surgery. Rehab. Slowly losing her memory. Dad was hospitalized with severe kidney failure.
The freezer wasn't working like it used to. The wafers were soggy. Sagging in all the wrong places.
No one knew their roles anymore. Does Vanilla take Dad to dialysis on Monday? What about the kids' calendar? Does Strawberry negotiate with her ex to switch holiday custody? Does Chocolate switch jobs because WFH got canceled?
Does anyone know if Mom and Dad put one of them on the bank accounts? Why are the doctors asking about HIPAA authorization?
The meltdown wasn't the fall. Or the memory loss. Or the kidney failure.
The meltdown was the silence before it.
What legal documents prevent the meltdown?
Incapacity. A stroke. A fall. A diagnosis. The freezer stops. The sandwich thaws.
The kids don't know who to call. Chocolate melts into vanilla. Strawberry into chocolate.
No one knows where one role ends and another begins. Because no one talked. Because everyone assumed the freezer would last forever.
What you need:
A durable power of attorney for finances
An advance health care directive
HIPAA authorizations so doctors can talk to your kids
A successor trustee named in your living trust
Without these, your family doesn't just inherit your assets. They inherit a court case.
Dirty Laundry Tip
Freezers don't last forever. Everybody thinks they do. Until they don't.
An incapacity plan keeps the sandwich from melting into a puddle of chaos and regret.
Plan for incapacity. It's overlooked. Like your freezer. Not because you're dying. Because freezers break.
All freezers eventually break.
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