“Make sure our kids have stability if something happens.”
“Support our church with 10% of our estate.”
“Fund a $50,000 education trust for each grandchild.”
When I sit down with clients to discuss estate planning, these are the types of comments I listen for. These are specific, plain-English outcomes that define a legacy.
Too often, people treat estate planning as a daunting chore involving a stack of complex legal papers. In reality, a truly meaningful plan is simply a reflection of the intentions you set for the people and causes you care about most. If you’ve been putting this off, the best way to start is to stop thinking about documents and start thinking about outcomes.
Once you understand the meaning behind your choices, the process becomes a matter of translation. I recommend starting with pen and paper. Write down three to five things that must happen if you’re no longer there to manage your affairs.
Once those goals are clear, we look for the highest-impact task that can be completed quickly. Often, this is simply updating the beneficiary designations on your retirement accounts and life insurance. These designations control a significant portion of wealth and can bypass the long, public probate process entirely. By securing these first, you create an immediate safety net while the broader plan is being built.
A sophisticated estate plan requires a few key professionals working in sync. While an estate attorney is essential for designing and drafting your core documents—like Wills, Trusts, and Powers of Attorney—their work doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
As your financial advisor, my role is to ensure your investment and retirement plans align with those legal structures. A trust is essentially an empty box. If your accounts aren’t titled correctly to move into that box, the plan won’t function as intended. Together with a tax professional to model the impact of gifts and estate taxes, we ensure that what the attorney drafts actually works in practice.
One of the most difficult hurdles in estate planning is assigning roles like executor or trustee. It’s common to default to the oldest child or a close family member out of a sense of fairness, but I encourage clients to prioritize temperament over birth order.
The best executor is someone organized and comfortable with deadlines. The best trustee is someone with a prudent mindset who is capable of remaining neutral during family conflicts. Before you name someone, run a scenario: Ask yourself how that person would handle a beneficiary pressuring them for an early distribution. Their likely answer tells you more about their fit for the role than their spot on the family tree.
The final, and perhaps most critical, piece of an estate plan is communication. I often advise clients to hold a “family huddle.” This is a values-alignment meeting, not a legal one.
When you explain the reason behind your decisions, you remove any surprise elements that often lead to conflict later. Sharing your intent during the family meeting—for example, that you’re using a trust to protect an inheritance from creditors rather than to control a child’s life—creates a foundation of trust.
Estate planning doesn’t have to be a months-long marathon. By breaking it into weekly phases, you can build a meaningful plan with consistent momentum:
By giving with intention and planning with purpose, you ensure your legacy supports your goals for generations to come. While this plan should be reviewed during major life events—like a move, a birth, or a significant change in assets—getting the foundation right today is the most important step. (For more resources, see our estate planning checklist.)
If you’re ready to move from a list of questions to a concrete action plan, I’m here to help. Reach out today.