The estate planning checklist for 2026

For most families, a complete estate plan in 2026 is four documents plus three housekeeping tasks: a will, a financial power of attorney, a healthcare directive with a HIPAA authorization, and for some people a living trust, combined with up-to-date beneficiary forms, property titled the way you actually intend, and a record of where everything is kept. That is the whole list. It usually takes a weekend, not a year.

Below is the checklist in order, with what each item is for and how to know whether you need it.

Step one: take stock of what you own and who depends on you

Start with a single page. Not account numbers, just categories and names.

• Real estate, and exactly how the deed is titled
• Bank and brokerage accounts
• Retirement accounts and life insurance
• A business interest, if you have one
• Vehicles and anything else with a title
• Meaningful personal property: jewelry, tools, collections, instruments
• Significant debts
• The people who depend on you: minor children, a spouse or partner, an aging parent, a sibling with a disability, pets

This page does two things. It tells you which documents you need, and it becomes the starting point for the map you leave your family at the end of the checklist.

The documents to sign

Most complete plans are three or four documents. Here is what each one is for.

A will

A will names who inherits what, who is in charge of carrying it out, and, critically for parents, who should raise your minor children. Without one, your state's default rules decide the first two and a judge decides the third with much less guidance. See who inherits if you die without a will for what that actually looks like.

Make sure your will includes:

• A named executor and a backup. See how to choose an executor.
• A named guardian and a backup, if you have children under 18.
• Specific gifts, if you want any.
• A residuary clause dividing everything else in percentages that add to 100.
• Alternates for beneficiaries.

Estateur's Will Package is $99 for one person and $149 for a couple, or $79 for a standalone will.

A financial power of attorney

This names someone to handle money matters if you are alive but cannot act: bills, banking, insurance, taxes, property. Without it, your family may have to ask a court to appoint a guardian or conservator, which is slower, public, and far more expensive. We compare the two directly in power of attorney vs. guardianship.

Make sure it is durable, meaning it continues to work after incapacity, and name a backup agent.

A healthcare directive and HIPAA authorization

Three related pieces, usually in one package:

• A healthcare power of attorney naming who speaks for you medically.
• A living will directive recording your own wishes about life-sustaining treatment, so your agent is carrying out your instructions rather than guessing.
• A HIPAA authorization letting providers share your records with your agent. This is the small piece that makes the others actually work at a hospital front desk.

Estateur's healthcare document is $59 and includes all three; the Power of Attorney Package with the financial document is $79 individual and $119 for a couple. Our guide to choosing a healthcare agent covers how to pick the right person.

A living trust, if you need one

Most people with straightforward finances do not. A revocable living trust is worth its extra cost and upkeep mainly when you:

• Own real estate, especially in more than one state
• Want to keep the details of your estate private, since probate files are public
• Want to control when children or grandchildren receive money, rather than handing it over at 18
• Want a smoother handoff if you become incapacitated

If none of those apply, a will plus powers of attorney is a complete plan. Our comparison of wills and living trusts and the guide on understanding a trust go through the trade-offs. Estateur's Trust Package is $279 individual and $379 for a couple, and includes the pour-over will.

If you do create a trust, fund it. An unfunded trust does nothing at all. Funding means retitling your home and your accounts into the trust's name. It is the step people skip and the reason trusts fail.

The two things that quietly override your documents

Signed documents are only half of a plan. These two items control a large share of what most families own, and they operate whatever your will says.

Check every beneficiary designation

This is the item most likely to be wrong on the day you read it, and the one that quietly overrides everything else you have written.

Retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, and payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts pass to the person named on the form, regardless of what your will says. If your 401(k) still names an ex-spouse, that is generally where it goes.

Check every one of them:

• 401(k), 403(b), IRA, pension
• Life insurance, including employer-provided coverage
• Annuities
• POD and TOD bank and brokerage registrations
• Health savings accounts

Name a contingent beneficiary on each as well. We explain the mechanics, and the traps involving minors and estates as beneficiaries, in the beneficiary form that overrides your will.

Look at how your property is titled

Titling is the other quiet override. A home held jointly with a right of survivorship passes to the surviving owner immediately, no matter what your will says. Some states allow transfer-on-death deeds for real estate, and many allow transfer-on-death registration for vehicles. What is available depends entirely on where the property sits, so check the rules for your state on our state estate planning pages, for example Illinois or Texas. The full picture is in what happens to your house when you die.

Write down your digital life

Accounts, photos, subscriptions, a small business's domain, two-factor codes. A lot of what matters now lives behind a login, and executors regularly find themselves locked out of accounts they have a legal right to handle. Keep a secure inventory, use the legacy-contact tools the major platforms offer, and never write passwords into your will, which becomes a public document in probate. See handling digital assets.

Sign everything correctly

A will that is not signed the way your state requires may not work at all. Requirements vary: the number of witnesses, who may serve as one, whether a notary is needed, and whether a self-proving affidavit is available. Powers of attorney and healthcare directives have their own separate requirements.

Three rules that hold up nearly everywhere: never use a beneficiary as a witness, have everyone sign together rather than passing pages around, and never write on a document after it is signed. Estateur gives you state-specific instructions with your documents, and our signing guide and execution guide cover the rest.

Store it where your family can find it

Keep signed originals somewhere fireproof and accessible, tell your executor and your agents where they are, and keep copies separately. A bank safe deposit box can be surprisingly hard to open right after a death. See storing your documents.

Then leave the map: the one-page inventory from step one, updated, plus your advisors' contact information and where each document lives.

Set a date to review it

An estate plan is a snapshot. Look at it again after a marriage, a divorce, a birth, a death, a move to another state, a large change in assets, or a change of heart about who should be in charge. Even without one of those, a quick read every three years is sensible. When to update your estate plan lists the triggers. Estateur Care is $39 a year for updates and revisions, with the first year included.

A note on federal estate tax

Almost nobody reading this will owe it. For 2026 the federal estate and gift tax applicable exclusion is $15,000,000 per person and $30,000,000 for a married couple, the generation-skipping transfer tax exemption is $15,000,000, and the top rate is 40 percent. The annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per recipient. Those figures come from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Pub. L. 119-21) and IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32. The practical takeaway is that the vast majority of families owe no federal estate tax at all, and should plan around probate, guardianship and clarity instead. Some states impose their own estate or inheritance tax with much lower thresholds, which is another reason to check your state's page.

The short version

If you do nothing else this month: sign a will, sign both powers of attorney, and fix your beneficiary forms. That covers the large majority of what goes wrong.

The three-minute quiz will tell you which documents fit your situation, our pricing page lists every option, and you can get started here.

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Estateur is a self-help document preparation service, not a law firm, and using Estateur does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you have a blended family, a beneficiary with special needs, a closely held business, property abroad, or a potentially taxable estate, work with an estate planning attorney in your state.