There is a gap in most estate plans, and it has nothing to do with drafting.
The documents answer who receives what. They almost never answer the questions a family actually faces in the first week: where is the original will, which bank held the mortgage, did he want to be buried or cremated, who do we call first.
Closing that gap costs an afternoon and spares your family weeks.
The asset inventory
This is a plain list of what you own and where it lives. Not values, not account numbers in full, just enough that nobody has to go looking.
What to include:
- Bank and credit union accounts, with institution names
- Investment and retirement accounts
- Life insurance policies, including any provided through work
- Real estate, and where the deeds are kept
- Vehicles, boats and trailers, and where titles are
- Business interests, and any agreements that govern them
- Safe deposit boxes, and who has authority to open them
- Debts: mortgage, loans, credit cards, anything on auto-pay
- Digital accounts, and where the password manager lives
Then add the people your family would need to call: attorney, accountant, insurance agent, financial advisor. Those four can usually reconstruct the rest.
Without this list, executors do detective work. They sort mail hoping a statement arrives, call institutions that cannot confirm an account exists, and sometimes miss assets entirely. Every state maintains an unclaimed property fund holding money nobody knew to look for.
Keep it somewhere secure, not in an email draft. A fireproof safe, a password manager, or with your attorney. Update it once a year.
Where the documents live
A perfectly drafted will that nobody can find is worth about as much as no will at all. In some situations, a missing original can raise a presumption that it was revoked, with the estate then handled as though no will existed.
Keep the original somewhere secure and known. Be cautious with safe deposit boxes, since depending on titling and state rules, a box can be sealed or difficult to access immediately after a death, which is exactly when the documents are needed.
Give copies of your healthcare documents to the people named in them and to your physician. Tell your executor where the original will is and how to get to it.
Final wishes
In the first 48 hours, a family decides burial or cremation, what kind of service, who speaks, what the obituary says, sometimes what you’ll wear. They make all of it while grieving, often with relatives who disagree.
Write down what you want:
- Burial or cremation, and where
- The kind of service, or that you’d prefer none
- Religious or cultural traditions that matter to you
- Military service, since veterans and their families may be entitled to honors and burial benefits they don’t know to ask about
- Music, readings, who you’d want to speak
- Your decision on organ and tissue donation
- Anything prepaid, and with which provider
One important caution: funeral instructions kept only inside a will are frequently found too late, because wills are often not located or read until after the service. Keep a separate copy with the people who will need it in the first two days.
The decision most plans never address
What happens if a beneficiary dies before you?
Under one approach, often called per stirpes, that person’s share passes down to their children. Under another, per capita, it is divided among the surviving beneficiaries at that level, and the deceased beneficiary’s children receive nothing.
Neither is wrong, and both are defensible. What causes trouble is when nobody chose deliberately, or when the will says one thing and the beneficiary form on a retirement account says another. Check both, and make them agree.
A one-page roadmap
If you do nothing else, write one page containing: where the original documents are, who your advisors are, which institutions you use, where the asset inventory lives, and what your wishes are for the first two days.
Give it to your executor. Tell your spouse and your children it exists.
It is the kindest page you will ever write, and it takes about twenty minutes.
Let’s make sure nothing is missing
Call us or send a message to schedule a free estate planning consultation. We’ll make sure the documents are right, and that the people who need them can actually find and use them.
Visit www.heritancelaw.com to get started.
