A good estate plan ensures your assets go where you want, with professional guidance and updates.
You see it dramatized in a Hallmark movie: The deceased’s young mistress for the last six months, sitting quietly behind the gathered family members, breaks into a huge smile. She has just learned that the dearly departed’s $20.6 million estate is all hers. Houses, cars, vacation retreat, jewelry and even the family business: all hers. The family is not pleased and shouts almost in unison, “We’ll sue!”
That’s one dramatic scenario that can result from a solid estate plan, one that recounts the dying wish of an elderly soul, who found happiness in his last days. But there are plenty of equivalent possibilities and many more that simply leave one or two family members unhappy.
The goal of most estate plans, agree estate plan lawyer Lindsay Coley and Certified Estate Planner Brandon Bell, is to honestly and completely reflect the final wishes of their late clients. Often, that’s easier said than done.
Putting together a fair, air-tight plan is difficult because of the complexity and the time investment in a document that can — and probably will — change over time. When you’re planning for the accumulations of a lifetime, Bell says, “everything’s a variable.” Detailing those variables is the challenge, and “sometimes the answers aren’t clear.”
To begin the process, says Coley, “I send out a questionnaire before we meet. That gives me an idea of assets, who [the client] wants to name in each capacity. We prepare the estate documents and then give advice. … [Clients] sometimes want different beneficiaries for different people. It’s like a puzzle based on clients’ goals.”
When the client works closely with a professional through the entire process, says Coley, it “can be very streamlined,” but that doesn’t always mean it’s final or even reflective of the client’s final wishes,” says Coley.
“We do the planning and manage it over time,” says Bell. But, he adds, “I can’t legally say whether the client needs a will or a trust. The lawyer will formulate that” as “a third legal, a third taxes and a third distribution.”
The planner, says Bell, will “do the planning and manage it over time.” Bottom line: “Clients pay for my advice, but I don’t make the decision. I stress that this is more than legal. A lot of these decisions need to be thought out.”
Coley adds that, “Any time you have a blended family, second or third marriage, special needs, addiction, a spendthrift, we try to be creative. There are unique situations — divorce, marriage, stepchildren, etc. — and we try use the tools we have. A trust will dictate how/when beneficiaries receive their funds.
“We can never promise that people won’t file lawsuits. … We can include language like no-contest provisions and put mechanisms in place to prove you knew what you were doing. It’s a puzzle with lots of different pieces.” Wills, Coley says, are better if the client is old when those wills are formulated. “Oldies are goodies” because when the documents are written late, there is less chance for a family contesting them.
Ernie Bentley and his wife, Sue, of Blacksburg, have planned well, paid cash, put money away and done the right things in preparation for retirement and the final distribution of assets. Says Bentley, “We could easily live on our Social Security if we didn’t travel,” but that’s not an option they consider. “Travel is our passion.”
The small trust they have from his father stipulated that “beneficiaries could never touch the principal in the trusts, but they were to receive all the earned income from interest and dividends. Earned income excludes capital gains which allows the trust to grow over time, even while paying out the income. The trusts were to dissolve upon the death of each beneficiary and the assets be distributed to the beneficiary’s children.” That’s all clear, right? Well, there’s more.
“There was a clause in the trust which gave the beneficiary the option of rolling the trust over into a new trust for his offspring, which my parents and uncles have done to the benefit of my cousins, brother and sisters.”
More variables followed and, “As the eldest sibling, I was appointed trustee of these family trust accounts. I can’t change the terms of the trust, but I can find a new manager while making sure each beneficiary receives their income.”
Ultimately, “while my parents were still living, the lawyer took several weeks to study the trust document which was several hundred pages in length. He finally set up an appointment and said this was the most complicated trust document he’s ever read; and then he created an almost identical document for our estate plan. Over the years I used him for several almost trivial things and became more and more disillusioned with his advice.
“We switched to another well-known estate lawyer who rewrote the whole thing in less than 50 pages. When my dad died and I became trustee of five family trusts I returned to the lawyer. He suggested that my needs had outgrown his ability and suggested we contact a lawyer in Roanoke, which we did.”
The new lawyer “is very knowledgeable about laws across the country. Frequently a new situation arises, and he’ll reply, ‘Normally, this is what I’d recommend, but recently a court in California came to this conclusion and we should consider that in reaching our decision.’”
Says Coley, “Sometimes we work as a team with the financial advisor or accountant. Sometimes the client only works with me. Most who come to me already have financial advisors. If they don’t have one, I provide names. A lot of clients think an estate plan is very simple, that you can download it online.” Not so much.
It is best to “work with somebody who can see the whole process,” she says. That process can be streamlined.
Who needs a plan? “Anyone over 18 should have a durable power of attorney, an advanced medical directive — parents may not be able to speak for you. You’ll need a will at minimum when you have children.”
Beyond that, you will have “an initial meeting discussing goals, assets, who you want to leave assets to. I draft a letter summarizing, then we have a meeting or a phone call. “The process should take two to three weeks, sometimes a little longer, but after the meeting, a fairly quick turnaround.”
But is that the end? Probably not.
Tips from SmartAsset.com
- Define your objectives. Estate planning has a straightforward yet daunting goal: to record a plan for distributing your life’s assets upon your death. Such a task encompasses elements of money, taxes, family dynamics and emotions.
- Inventory your belongings. Before you can assign beneficiaries to what you own, you need to take stock of what you have. Examples include homes, land and real estate; cars/boats; collectibles/antiques; sentimental family heirlooms; practical possessions (clothing, books, tools, etc.); bank accounts; investments; and life insurance policies.
- Consider your values. Take stock of what you want to leave behind. What legacy, memory or impact do you want to make? What do you value?
- Brainstorm your beneficiaries. In most states, next-of-kin are the standard estate beneficiaries when a will doesn’t exist. But such a standard may not align with your wishes.
- Prepare your inheritors’ tool chest: Life insurance, Trust, Power of attorney, Medical Care Directive (a.k.a. DNR), Tax implications
- Enlist the advice of a pro. Getting the right advice at the right time could save your beneficiaries significant tax liability, and makes the process less stressful.
- Don’t set it and forget it. A quality estate plan should always be updated.
The story above is from our November/December 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
