Considering Estate Planning? Here's Your Checklist

Estate Planning Checklist

Estate planning is about more than deciding who inherits your assets. It is also about making it easier for the people you trust to find important information, understand your wishes and help when needed.

Use the eight steps below to organize your documents and accounts, then connect them with your personal financial plan and conversations with your estate attorney.

1. Inventory Your Assets

Start with a list of your bank and investment accounts, property, digital assets and important personal possessions. For each financial account, record the institution, how it is owned, the listed beneficiaries and where statements are kept.

Add major debts, including mortgages and credit lines, and note where supporting documents are stored. Keep the inventory secure and update it as accounts or circumstances change.

2. Review Financial and Medical Powers of Attorney

Ask your estate attorney about separate documents for financial decisions and health care decisions. In Texas, a statutory durable financial power of attorney can authorize an agent to manage matters such as assets, bills and taxes; it does not authorize medical decisions. See the Texas State Law Library's financial power-of-attorney guidance.

A medical power of attorney addresses health care decisions when you cannot make them yourself. Review advance directives as well, and choose trusted agents and backups who understand your wishes and responsibilities.

3. Create or Review Your Will

Work with your estate attorney on a will that identifies who should receive property governed by the will and who should administer your estate. Without a valid will, state intestacy law generally determines who inherits probate property.

A will does not, by itself, avoid probate. In Texas, admitting a will to probate is the court process that validates it for property transfers; whether administration or a simpler procedure is appropriate depends on the estate. See the Texas State Law Library's probate guidance.

4. Consider Whether a Trust Fits

A trust can direct how assets held in it are managed and distributed. Whether it helps avoid probate depends on how the assets are titled or directed to the trust, not simply on signing a trust document.

A revocable trust generally lets you retain control and make changes, while its assets generally remain in your estate for federal estate-tax purposes. An irrevocable trust places greater limits on control, but estate exclusion and tax benefits are not automatic; the terms, retained powers and applicable law matter. Review the trade-offs with your estate attorney and tax preparer, and read our guide to irrevocable trusts.

5. Establish a Letter of Instruction

Use a letter of instruction to explain practical matters such as where important documents are stored, whom to contact and your funeral or obituary preferences. Keep passwords and other sensitive credentials in a secure system, with appropriate access instructions for your trusted person rather than a broadly shared list of secrets.

Tell your chosen people where the instructions are stored and discuss how appropriate access will work. Review those arrangements when your documents, accounts or chosen contacts change.

6. Review Accounts and Beneficiaries

Review account ownership and beneficiary designations after major life events and whenever you update your estate documents. Named beneficiaries generally control the transfer of designated accounts rather than instructions in a will, subject to the account's terms and applicable law.

Do not assume that updating your will also changes your retirement-account or life-insurance beneficiaries. Coordinate the actual account forms with the overall plan, including backup beneficiaries and any intended trust arrangements.

7. Understand Taxes and State Regulations

For 2026, the federal estate and gift tax basic exclusion is $15 million per person. Prior taxable gifts can use part of that amount. A married couple may be able to use both spouses' exclusions, but a surviving spouse does not automatically receive an unused exclusion: portability generally requires an estate-tax return election. See the IRS estate-tax FAQs.

Texas has no state estate or inheritance tax, but other states' rules may matter if you own property elsewhere or relocate. Ask your estate attorney and tax preparer which rules apply rather than assuming the federal threshold answers every tax question.

8. Connect Your Estate Plan With Your Investments

Your estate documents and investment accounts should tell the same story. Todd Smurl, CFA, can help review account ownership, beneficiary designations, cash needs and investments as part of your personal financial plan, coordinating with your estate attorney and tax preparer.

Schedule an introductory meeting with Todd to discuss how your accounts and investment plan fit your estate-planning goals.

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