I always assumed my siblings and I had the same plan
My parents live in the Boston area and they're both in their early 70s thankfully they're still healthy and independent a few weeks ago my brother casually mentioned that if anything ever happened he'd handle all the paperwork but my sister looked at him and said she thought I was the one who knew where everything was.
That was the moment we realized none of us had ever talked about it. We all had different assumptions so my brother thought my parents had recently updated their wills and my sister assumed someone already had power of attorney if it was ever needed I figured they had everything organized because my dad has always been the one who keeps track of paperwork so none of us were right.
The next Sunday we sat down with our parents after dinner and started asking questions it wasn't awkward the way I expected it to be my parents admitted there were things they'd been meaning to update for years but never got around to we made a list of what needed attention figured out where all the important documents were and over the next month got everything sorted out.
The biggest surprise wasn't how much paperwork there was it was realizing how easy it is for families to assume someone else has already figured everything out.
Nothing dramatic happened so we were lucky enough to have this conversation before there was an emergency and I'm really grateful for that it feels like one of those things nobody wants to bring up until they finally do and then everyone wonders why it took so long.