You Made a Will. Great. But You’re Not Done.

You did it.

Maybe Make-A-Will Month finally gave you the push you needed. Maybe “get a will” has been living on your to-do list for the last five years and you finally decided enough was enough. Either way, you sat down, signed the documents, and accomplished something most families continue putting off.

And that absolutely matters. Seriously.

But here's what I tell clients who come to me after having a will prepared somewhere else: don't confuse having a will with having a complete estate plan.

Most people sign the documents, tuck them safely into a drawer, and think, Great. Estate planning, done. Then life happens, and their family discovers all the things that beautifully signed will doesn't actually handle.

So if you've made your will, celebrate that checkmark.

Then keep going.

Here's your checklist for what should come next.

First Things First: Know What You Signed 

A will is a legal document that tells the court what you want to happen to certain assets after you die. Important? Absolutely. The whole plan? Not even close.

For starters, a will doesn't keep your family out of court. Assets that pass through your will generally have to go through probate, a public court process that can take months, cost your estate thousands of dollars, and delay your family's access to assets while everything works its way through the system.

Your will also controls what's actually written in it, not the conversations you had at Thanksgiving. If you told your niece she's getting your car but your documents say something different, your good intentions don't necessarily control. Disagreements over what someone "promised" can lead to a will contest, and even an unsuccessful challenge can mean more legal fees, more delays, and exactly the kind of family drama you were hoping to avoid.

Then there are the assets your will may not control at all. Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and accounts with payable-on-death or transfer-on-death beneficiaries generally pass according to the beneficiary designation on file. And yes, that could be the form you filled out 15 years ago and haven't looked at since.

And finally, your will only helps after you die. If you're injured, seriously ill, or otherwise unable to make decisions for yourself, your will is sitting on the sidelines. Without separate incapacity documents, your family may have to go to court to get authority to manage your finances or make certain medical decisions for you.

The bottom line: Your will has an important job. It just can't do all the jobs. Here's what you need to put in place to build the rest of the plan.

Step 1: Check Your Beneficiary Designations 

Most people don't realize this when they sign a will: there's another set of forms quietly deciding where some of their biggest assets will go. Those are your beneficiary designations and they generally operate completely outside your will.

And here's the part you really need to know: if your will says one thing and a valid beneficiary designation says another, the beneficiary designation generally controls. Your will doesn't swoop in and fix it. The person named on that form is typically the person receiving that asset.

I see outdated designations all the time. An ex-spouse is still named on a retirement account. A parent who died years ago is still listed. Or a minor child is named directly, creating the possibility of court involvement to manage that inheritance until the child reaches the applicable age even though the parents thought their will controlled how and when the child would receive the money.

That's why every retirement account, life insurance policy, and bank or investment account with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designation needs to be reviewed. Each should have the appropriate primary and contingent beneficiaries, and those choices should reflect your family today, not whoever made sense when you filled out the paperwork at your first job fifteen years ago.

The bottom line: Your will and your beneficiary designations are separate pieces of your estate plan, and they need to work together. Reviewing every designation is one of the first things I do with families during an Estate Planning Session because this is one of the easiest places for an otherwise beautifully designed estate plan to quietly fall apart.

Step 2: Make Sure Your Trust Is Actually Funded 

If you have a trust sitting next to your will, there's one very important question I want you to ask: Are my assets actually in it?

Because here's the thing, a trust only controls the assets that are properly connected to it. Signing the trust creates the legal structure. Actually transferring or coordinating your assets with that trust, what we call funding the trust is a separate step. And it's a step far too many families miss. If assets that should have been transferred into your trust are still titled individually, they may still end up going through probate despite that beautiful trust sitting safely in your binder.

I see this more often than I should. A family paid for a trust. They signed everything. They walked away believing probate was handled. Then someone dies and the family discovers that nobody ever finished the funding. The trust exists. The assets just never made it there. And now the family may be headed to the exact probate court they thought they had planned to avoid.

If you're reading this thinking, I have absolutely no idea whether my trust is funded, that's your sign to find out. And if it isn't properly funded, fixing that should move straight to the top of the list.

The bottom line: Signing a trust isn't enough. It has to be properly funded and coordinated with your assets to do the job you created it to do. Funding doesn't magically happen when you sign the documents. Someone has to make sure it actually gets done.

Step 3. Your Will Does Nothing If You’re Still Alive 

A will only comes into play after you die. But what happens if you're very much alive and suddenly can't make financial or medical decisions for yourself? That's an entirely different part of the plan and it requires its own legal documents.

At a minimum, a complete estate plan should include a durable power of attorney, giving someone you trust authority to handle financial matters if you can't; an advance directive or living will, spelling out your wishes for medical care; and a healthcare proxy or medical power of attorney, naming the person you want making healthcare decisions when you can't make them yourself.

I also make sure my clients have a HIPAA authorization in place so the people they've chosen can access important medical information. Because the last thing you want during a medical crisis is your family fighting with a hospital just to find out what's happening.

If you made a will and stopped there, you've planned for your death. You haven't necessarily planned for the possibility that you're alive but unable to manage your own affairs. And for many families, incapacity can create just as much or even more chaos because someone still needs to pay the bills, manage the finances, communicate with doctors, and keep everyday life moving.

The bottom line: Your will is one important piece of the puzzle. Planning for incapacity matters just as much and those are often the documents families don't realize they're missing until they desperately need them.

Step 4. Know Who’s Keeping Your Plan Up to Date 

Your life is going to change. Your estate plan better be able to keep up.

When I work with families through an Estate Planning relationship, we revisit the plan at least every three years. We recheck beneficiary designations. We make sure new accounts and property have been properly coordinated with the trust. We confirm that the guardians you chose for your children still make sense for your family today. We look at the people named in your powers of attorney and healthcare documents and ask, Are these still the people you want stepping in? And most importantly, we make sure the plan you created years ago still fits the life you're actually living now.

Because here's what I see all the time: the plans that create problems aren't necessarily bad plans. They were good plans when they were created. Life changed. The plan didn't.

A divorce. Another baby. A move to a different state. A new house. A significant change in wealth. A beneficiary who died. A guardian who moved away. Any one of these can quietly create a hole in a plan that looked perfectly buttoned up the day you signed it.

That's why working with a Personal Family Lawyer® isn't supposed to be a one-and-done transaction. I stay connected to my clients and their families so we're updating the plan as life happens, not discovering what's outdated when it's already too late to fix it.

The bottom line: A plan that's regularly reviewed has a much better chance of working when your family actually needs it. A plan you sign, stick in a drawer, and forget about? That's not a strategy. That's hoping nothing changes.

The Platform Made the Documents. Who’s Managing the Plan? 

If you made your will through an online platform, or even through an attorney who handed you documents and sent you on your way, I am genuinely glad you did it. You took the first step. And something is absolutely better than nothing.

But here's what the platform probably didn't do. It didn't review every beneficiary designation to make sure it matches your plan. It didn't confirm whether your trust is actually funded. It may not have prepared your healthcare directive or durable power of attorney. It didn't talk through what happens if you're incapacitated instead of dead, whether the guardian you named still makes sense today, or whether the people you've put in charge are actually the right people for the job. And it won't be checking back in as your family and your life continue to change.

There's another piece that's just as important: understanding who you're naming in these documents and what you're actually asking them to do.

AI can give you a perfectly good definition of a successor trustee. But I can sit across the table from you and say, "Okay, little Johnny is 21. He wants $500,000 from his trust to buy a Lamborghini. Is Aunt Sally really the person who's going to look him in the eye and say absolutely not?"

That's the planning conversation.

I've seen parents of toddlers name their own aging parents as successor trustees without considering whether those grandparents will realistically be around or capable of managing a trust for the next 20 or 30 years. Healthcare agents require the same level of thought. I've seen people put the wrong person in that role, and when a medical crisis happens, that choice can have consequences a family never anticipated.

A platform can generate the document. A lawyer helps you understand who should be named, what authority you're giving them, and what you're actually asking that person to handle when real life happens.

When I sit down with a family for an Estate Planning Session, we're looking at the whole picture: what you own, who you love, who you're putting in charge, what situations your family could realistically face, and what documents and legal structures actually address them. The goal isn't a folder full of beautifully signed paperwork. It's a plan that works the way you intended when your family actually needs it.

The bottom line: Online tools can create documents. They can't replace the conversations, judgment, and ongoing guidance that turn those documents into a plan designed to actually work for your family.

Before Make-A-Will Month Ends, Take the Next Step 

If you made a will this month, give yourself credit. You did something important.

Now don't stop there.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, I offer an Estate Planning Session where we look at the whole picture, what you already have, what's missing, how your assets are titled, whether your beneficiary designations make sense, and whether your documents actually work together.

Most families leave the session more financially organized than they've ever been and, more importantly, knowing exactly what they have and what they still need to do.

Schedule a complimentary 15-minute discovery call, and let's figure out where your plan actually stands: https://pages.20westlegal.com/schedule/15-minute-intro-call

This article is a service of 20West Legal, a Personal Family Lawyer® Firm. We don’t just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer an Estate Planning Session, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule an Estate Planning Session.

The content is sourced from Personal Family Lawyer® for use by Personal Family Lawyer firms, a source believed to be providing accurate information. This material was created for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as ERISA, tax, legal, or investment advice. If you are seeking legal advice specific to your needs, such advice services must be obtained on your own, separate from this educational material.

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