Estate planning for new parents

If you have a new baby, there are three decisions that matter and everything else is detail. First, who would raise your child if you and your co-parent both could not. Second, who would manage the money your child inherits, and at what age your child should receive it. Third, who makes decisions for you if you are alive but unable to decide, which matters more when someone depends on you daily.

Write those three down, put them in properly signed documents, and you have done the important part. It usually takes an evening. You do not need a complicated plan and you almost certainly do not need to think about federal estate tax.

Decision 1: Who raises your child

This is the reason most new parents finally write a will. A will is where you nominate a guardian for your children under 18.

Without a nomination, a court decides among whoever steps forward, using the child's best interests as the standard. Usually that lands somewhere reasonable. Sometimes two sets of grandparents disagree and a judge who never met your family resolves it over months. A written nomination is not absolutely binding on a court, but it carries real weight and it usually stops the argument from starting.

How to actually choose

Set aside the awkwardness and score candidates on a few honest questions:

• Would my child feel safe and loved there? This outranks everything else.
• Are their values and daily life close enough to ours? Religion, schooling, screen time, discipline. You do not need a clone. You need someone who would not raise your child in a way that would distress you.
• Do they have the capacity? Health, age, their own children, their work, their stability.
• Where do they live? A move across the country is a lot on top of a loss. It is not disqualifying, but weigh it.
• Would they say yes? Ask. Do not assume.

Two traps worth naming. The first is defaulting to your own parents because it feels natural: think honestly about their health and energy fifteen years from now. The second is picking a couple and not saying what happens if that couple separates. Name an individual as the guardian, and name a backup.

Our guide on how to name a guardian for your children works through this in more detail.

Also name a short-term plan

Guardianship confirmation takes time. Make sure a trusted local person knows they may need to pick your child up on an hour's notice, and that your child's school or daycare has their name on file. Practical, not legal, and it fills the gap.

Decision 2: Who handles the money, and until what age

This is the decision new parents skip, and it produces the most predictable bad outcome: a child who inherits everything outright on their eighteenth birthday.

Think about what your child would actually receive. Most young families carry life insurance, often several hundred thousand dollars of it, plus retirement accounts. For a 24-year-old parent's estate, that can be the largest sum that will ever pass through their family at once. Handing it to an 18-year-old is rarely what anyone intends.

You have three tools.

A trust for minors inside your will. Your will can create a trust that takes effect at your death, with a trustee who manages the money for your child's health, education and support, and distributions at ages you choose. Many families use staged ages, for example a portion in the mid-twenties and the balance around 30. This costs nothing extra beyond writing the will.

A revocable living trust. Useful if you own real estate, own property in more than one state, want privacy, or want one set of instructions governing most of your assets. Estateur's Trust Package is $279 individual and $379 for a couple, and includes the pour-over will. Our comparison of wills and living trusts explains when the added cost is worth it.

Beneficiary designations pointed at the right place. This is the part that undoes the other two if you get it wrong. Life insurance and retirement accounts pass to whoever is named on the form, not under your will. If you name a minor child directly, the insurer will not pay a child, so the money goes into a court-supervised arrangement and often lands in their hands at 18 anyway. Naming a trust as the beneficiary is usually the answer, and it should be set up carefully. See the beneficiary form that overrides your will.

Trustee and guardian can be different people

They usually should be. The guardian needs warmth, stability and values you trust. The trustee needs to be organized and careful with money. Splitting the roles also creates a mild, healthy check: the person raising your child asks the person holding the money, and both are acting for the same child. Name backups for both.

Decision 3: Who acts for you if you cannot

A will only operates after death. The more likely scenario, statistically, is a period where you are alive and cannot make decisions: an accident, a serious illness, a complicated delivery.

Two documents cover it.

A durable financial power of attorney lets someone you choose pay your mortgage, handle insurance, deal with your bank and manage your affairs. Durable means it keeps working after incapacity, which is the entire point.

A healthcare power of attorney, usually packaged with a living-will directive recording your own treatment wishes and a HIPAA authorization that lets providers share your records with your agent. Estateur's healthcare document at $59 includes all three; the Power of Attorney Package is $79 for one person and $119 for a couple.

Without these, your family may have to petition a court to be appointed guardian or conservator, which is slow, public and expensive at exactly the wrong moment. We lay out the comparison in power of attorney vs. guardianship, and our guide to choosing a healthcare agent covers picking the right person.

Name your co-parent first, if that fits your family, and name a backup who is not in the same car as you.

Life insurance, briefly

Not a legal document, but it is what funds everything above. Term life insurance is inexpensive for healthy people in their twenties and thirties, and it is the practical answer to how a guardian affords to raise your child. Check whether you have employer coverage and how much, and point the beneficiary designation at the right place. A stay-at-home parent needs coverage too; replacing full-time childcare costs real money.

What you can safely ignore for now

Federal estate tax. For 2026 the applicable exclusion is $15,000,000 per person and $30,000,000 for a married couple, with a top rate of 40 percent, and the annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per recipient, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Pub. L. 119-21) and IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32. The vast majority of families will never owe any federal estate tax. Your plan is about guardianship, clarity and avoiding court, not taxes. A small number of states do impose their own estate or inheritance tax at lower thresholds, which you can check on our state estate planning pages, such as Illinois or Texas.

Sign it properly, then put it somewhere findable

A will that is not signed correctly for your state may not work at all. Witness requirements, who may serve as a witness, and notary and self-proving affidavit rules all vary. Never use a beneficiary as a witness, have everyone sign together, and do not write on the document afterward. Estateur includes state-specific signing instructions with your documents, and our signing guide covers the mechanics.

Then tell your guardian, your executor and your agents where the signed originals are, and keep a short written note of your accounts and insurance policies with them. See storing your estate planning documents.

Revisit it

Come back to it when a second child arrives, when you move to another state, when your named guardian's circumstances change, or when your finances change materially. Every few years otherwise. When to update your estate plan lists the triggers, and Estateur Care is $39 a year for updates and revisions with the first year included.

Start here

The three-minute quiz asks about your family and tells you which documents fit. If you already know, the Will Package is $99 for one person and $149 for a couple, and you can get started here. For the full walkthrough, see how to make a will online.

You are tired and you have a lot on. This is one evening, and it removes a genuine worry.

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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 your child has special needs, if you are in a blended family, or if you are not married to your co-parent, talk to an estate planning attorney in your state, because those situations need real judgment.