Uptick in Will Updates Possibly Due to COVID-19 Pandemic

The 2025 Will & Estate Planning Survey, conducted by Caring.com, considered how often Americans update their existing estate planning documents and the steady decline in the number who have them.

Charlotte, NC; January 31, 2025 — Caring.com, a leading senior living referral service and the nation’s top site for care reviews, published its 2025 Will & Estate Planning Survey results. Since 2015, Caring.com has conducted a wills survey to raise awareness about the importance of estate planning. The number of Americans with estate planning documents has declined since 2022, when more than 50% of respondents said that estate planning was essential to them. Three years later, more than 50% of respondents don’t have a will at all.

Procrastination remains a top factor behind lack of estate plans; 43% of respondents without a will “just haven’t gotten around to it.” Only 24% of wills survey respondents said they have a will, 13% reported a living trust, and 4% said they have other estate planning documents.

What motivates an individual without a will to start estate planning? Americans agree on one primary reason to look into estate planning: their health. Lifetime milestones (e.g., retirement or family expansion) and medical concerns are leading factors that entice individuals to plan out their estate. Medical diagnoses account for 10% of respondents' chosen reasons for updating wills.. Preparations for serious medical procedures were cited as the motivation behind 7% of estate planning updates.

This image includes a graph comparing data from the 2025 Will and Estate Planning Survey on Why Americans in 2025 Updated Their Estate Plans. This graph is a bar graph. On the left side, from top to bottom the following reasons for updates to the will are: loss of spouse via divorce, loss of spouse via death, executor or secondary beneficiaries (non-spouse) passed away, change in assets: wealth increase (e.g., bought a house, inherited money or property, etc.), Change in assets: wealth reduction (e.g., repossession, loss of a business, loss of stocks, etc.), Family expanded (e.g., marriage, birth, etc.), Preparation for a big medical procedure, and lastly, I was diagnosed with a major medical condition. The percentages below the bar graph range between 0 percent and 30 percent. This question allowed for multiple answers per response.

Alarmingly, the cohort who reported having children or senior parents depending on them (respondents aged 35 to 54) is the largest group without estate documents, leaving two vulnerable groups open to even more risk if their caregiver were to die without a will in place.

Many of Caring’s respondents over 55 have their estate plans in place, which supports “retirement or age-related milestone” as a top motivator for estate planning. In a pleasant surprise, respondents aged 18 to 34 also had estate plans in place. Caring theorizes that this uptick in prepared youth is due to TikTok partnerships promoting estate planning websites throughout 2024.

While COVID-19 is not a fear that most respondents worry about anymore, it’s still affecting how we think about our lives and deaths. The 2025 Wills Survey findings appear to indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic led many Americans to experience a change in assets and, therefore, a change in their estate plans. Some of these asset changes are positive: many individuals, almost 30% of respondents, updated their wills due to a raise, inheritance, or property ownership.

As Caring analyzed the data, we uncovered how current and past events affect our estate planning and how individuals have adapted their mindsets accordingly.

Caring.com provides numerous resources to help seniors and their caregivers with the financial, emotional, and physical impacts of aging and/or caring for their parents.

Read our full 2025 Wills report for more findings from this survey, including:

The number of Americans with a will (24% in 2025) has declined steadily from 33% of respondents in 2022.
Americans with children under 18 comprise the largest cohort of people without wills or other estate planning documents.
Most people who update their wills did so within the last five years, primarily due to family expansion or asset change.
Estate planning is still being affected by COVID-19, five years after the pandemic reached the United States.

Methodology

In this ninth installment, Caring.com partnered with YouGov to survey more than 2,500 American adults aged 18+ to understand their estate planning status, updates to their documentation, and what made them begin the estate planning process. The survey was conducted online from January 3 to 6, 2025.

About Caring

With millions of visitors to its flagship website, Caring.com, Caring is a leading senior living referral service and the nation’s top site for senior care reviews. Founded in 2007, Caring’s mission is to help as many seniors and their caregivers as possible through empathetic, expert guidance. Applying cutting-edge technology to this humane mission, Caring provides relevant senior care information and support, as well as comprehensive senior living and senior care directories for the United States, including nearly 400,000 consumer reviews. Through a toll-free referral line at (800) 558-0653, Caring’s trusted, nationwide team of Family Advisors — who are among the most highly trained, highly skilled, and knowledgeable experts in senior care — helps seniors and their families research and connect to the most appropriate services and support for their specific situations. For more information about our organization and our free services for seniors and their families, please visit http://www.caring.com/about and join with Caring on Facebook.