Estate Plan?
You signed your estate planning documents, put them somewhere safe, and checked an important task off your list. Since then, life continued. Children grew up. Grandchildren arrived. Relationships changed. You bought or sold property. Financial accounts moved. Someone you named as an executor, trustee, guardian, or agent may no longer represent your first choice. Meanwhile, how much do you actually remember about the documents you signed?
At Skvarna Law Firm in Glendora and Upland, California, we encourage clients to think of an estate plan as something that should remain connected to their lives. Creating a plan matters, but understanding what it says—and periodically making sure those instructions still reflect your wishes—matters, too.
So let’s see how well you know yours.
1. Who Will Handle Your Estate?
Start with a basic question: Who did you name to take charge when you die?
If you have a will, you likely nominated an executor to administer your estate through probate if court administration becomes necessary. If you established a revocable living trust, you also named a successor trustee to manage and distribute trust assets after your death or potentially step in if you become incapacitated.
Can you name those people without checking your documents?
More importantly, would you choose them today?
Someone who seemed like an excellent choice 10 years ago may have moved away, developed health problems, experienced financial difficulties, or simply become less involved in your life. Your relationships may have changed as well.
Your plan should also identify appropriate backups in case your first choice cannot or will not serve.
2. When Do Your Beneficiaries Receive Their Inheritances?
If your estate plan leaves assets to children, grandchildren, or other beneficiaries, do you know when and how they receive them?
Some trusts distribute assets outright at a particular age. Others divide distributions into stages or allow assets to remain in trust under specified terms.
Think about the people named in your plan today.
A distribution structure created when your child was 12 may feel very different now that the child is 30. Likewise, a beneficiary’s financial circumstances, marriage, health, disability, or other life events may affect whether the plan you originally created still accomplishes what you intended.
The amount someone inherits represents only part of the decision. The terms of the inheritance matter, too.
3. Who Would Care for Your Minor Children?
Parents of minor children should know immediately whom they nominated as guardian.
If you created your estate plan years ago, however, revisit that choice.
Is the person still willing and able to serve? Does that individual still have the relationship with your children that you expected? Have family circumstances changed?
If your children have since become adults, guardianship provisions may no longer have practical relevance—but that milestone itself provides a good reason to review the rest of the plan.
Estate planning should change as your family changes.
4. Who Can Handle Your Finances If You Can’t?
Estate planning isn’t only about death.
A comprehensive plan also addresses the possibility that illness, injury, or incapacity could prevent you from managing your own affairs. A financial power of attorney can authorize someone to act on your behalf within the authority granted by the document.
Do you remember whom you selected?
Ask yourself whether that person still represents the right choice. Your agent may need to handle banking, bills, financial accounts, property matters, or other important responsibilities.
You should have confidence in both the person’s judgment and willingness to act.
5. Who Can Make Healthcare Decisions for You?
Now ask the same question about healthcare.
Who did you authorize to make medical decisions if you cannot communicate or make those decisions yourself?
Your chosen healthcare agent should not learn about the responsibility for the first time during an emergency. Ideally, that person understands your values and has some familiarity with your wishes.
California estate planning can include an Advance Health Care Directive addressing these important decisions.
If you can’t remember whom you named—or your wishes have changed—that deserves attention.
6. Do Your Beneficiary Designations Match Your Plan?
This question catches people by surprise because not everything necessarily passes according to a will or trust.
Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and certain other assets may transfer according to beneficiary designations. Those designations can therefore play an important role in the overall estate plan.
When did you last review yours?
An old designation can create unintended results, particularly after marriage, divorce, death, or other major family changes. Estate planning requires coordination among your documents, asset ownership, and beneficiary designations rather than treating each piece separately.
7. Is Your Trust Actually Funded?
Creating a revocable living trust and signing the document doesn’t automatically place every asset into it.
Assets generally need to be properly coordinated with the trust. For example, real property intended to belong to the trust may need appropriate title documentation.
This can become especially important in California, where avoiding unnecessary probate often represents a significant reason people establish living trusts.
If you bought a house after creating your trust, refinanced property, opened new accounts, or made other substantial financial changes, review whether those assets remain coordinated with your estate plan.
A beautifully drafted trust can’t control an asset it doesn’t legally govern.
8. Can Your Family Find Your Documents?
You know you created an estate plan. Does anyone else know where it is?
Your executor, successor trustee, agents, or trusted family members should have enough information to locate important documents when necessary. Original signed documents can become particularly important when court proceedings or other legal processes arise.
That doesn’t mean everyone needs unrestricted access to your private financial information today. It means the appropriate people shouldn’t have to search through filing cabinets, boxes, computers, and storage units during a crisis.
9. Does Your Plan Account for Your Digital Life?
Estate plans created years ago may devote little attention to digital assets.
Today, our lives can include online financial accounts, cloud storage, social media, cryptocurrency, digital photographs, subscription services, electronically stored records, and other digital property.
Your fiduciaries may need appropriate authority and information to identify and manage those assets.
You don’t necessarily want to put every current password directly into an estate planning document that could become outdated. However, your plan should address digital assets, and you should have a secure system that allows appropriate access when necessary.
10. When Did an Estate Planning Attorney Last Review Your Plan?
Here’s the question that ties everything together.
If your answer is “I don’t remember,” your estate plan probably deserves another look.
You don’t need to rewrite your estate plan every year. However, major life events and significant changes in assets can provide reasons for review. Changes in California or federal law can matter as well.
Even when nothing dramatic has happened, periodically reviewing your documents helps you confirm that the people, instructions, and structure you chose years ago still make sense today.
How Did You Do?
There isn’t a scorecard for this quiz.
Answering every question from memory doesn’t prove that your estate plan remains legally or practically appropriate. Missing several answers doesn’t necessarily mean the plan has a serious problem, either.
The value lies in discovering what you don’t know.
Pull out your documents and review them. Look at the names. Examine the distribution instructions. Check your powers of attorney and healthcare documents. Review beneficiary designations and consider whether major assets remain properly coordinated with your trust.
If something surprises you, confuses you, or no longer reflects your wishes, don’t wait for your family to discover the same issue when they need the plan.
An estate plan shouldn’t become a time capsule.
It should reflect the life, family, assets, and decisions you have now.
About Skvarna Law Firm in Glendora and Upland, California
Skvarna Law Firm operates from Glendora and Upland, California, serving clients throughout San Bernardino County, Los Angeles County, Orange County, and Riverside County, including Upland, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Colton, Rialto, Chino, Chino Hills, Glendora, Claremont, La Verne, San Dimas, Covina, West Covina, Azusa, and surrounding communities. The firm helps individuals and families with estate planning, trusts, wills, probate, and elder law, providing personalized legal guidance designed to protect clients, their families, and their assets.
