You and the people you love deserve to breathe easy knowing that every what-if is taken care of. Estate planning helps you do that. By creating the core legal documents in an estate plan, you can make a plan for everything from how you want healthcare decisions to be made, who you want to be able to make them (in case you can’t communicate), and what happens to your assets after you’re gone.
Expecting the unexpected is part of being a responsible grownup. That’s why every adult should have an estate plan. Starting the process from an informed place always feels better. Let’s walk through the estate planning basics—from the legal documents you need to how to navigate the process with ease (yes, it’s possible).
Estate planning is the process of making legal arrangements after an individual’s death. It includes planning for incapacity and for the management and distribution of your assets. Creating an estate plan ensures that your wishes are honored, the people you love are taken care of, and you’ve minimized estate tax, legal headaches, and family strife.
In the estate planning process, there are five documents you’ll encounter often enough that we’ll call them the “main characters” of estate planning. You may not need all of them—looking at you, Revocable Living Trust—but you do want to know what they are so you can make informed decisions.
A Power of Attorney (POA) appoints someone you trust to make decisions on your behalf. A POA will take effect if you are unable to make your own decisions whether due to illness, injury, or absence. You can choose between a General (Durable) Power of Attorney that grants broad decision-making powers, or two separate POAs: a Medical (Healthcare) Power of Attorney that allows someone to make medical decisions only, and a more limited General Power of Attorney if you want to specifically designate someone to make financial decisions (but not healthcare-related decisions) for you in the event that you need it.
An Advance Healthcare Directive gives you the power to make your healthcare decisions in advance so others don’t have to. Have strong feelings about life-sustaining treatment? This is the (legally binding) document for you. An Advance Directive allows you to specify if you want treatments like CPR, mechanical ventilation (life support), feeding tubes/artificial nutrition, artificial hydration, and life-prolonging medications. You can even indicate if you’d prefer pain medication or minimal intervention if you need palliative care.
A HIPAA Authorization form gives you control over who can receive your medical records and what information they can access. A Release of Medical Records ensures the right people have access to your healthcare information, which becomes more important as we age and/or enter end-of-life care - but it can also come in handy at many other times.
A Last Will and Testament is a crucial legal document that outlines how you want your assets, property, and guardianship of minor children to be handled after you pass away. Every adult needs a Will. Without one, state laws determine asset distribution and legal guardianship—which may not align with your wishes.
Wills commonly cover property like real estate and assets like financial accounts (think: retirement account, bank account, investment account, etc.), in addition to designating legal guardians for minor children. You can even use your Will to make beneficiary designations to charitable organizations, provide for pets, and leave sentimental gifts.
Trusts provide your loved ones with hassle-free inheritance. At Duckpins, we focus on Revocable Living Trusts, which allow you to maintain full control over your assets while you’re alive, modify/cancel the Trust at any time, ensure guardianship of minor children is legally documented, and bypass probate—speeding up asset distribution for inheritors.
The traditional estate planning process involves working with an estate planning lawyer to assess assets, determine beneficiaries, and create legal documents like Wills, Trusts, and Power of Attorney (POA). It can be time-consuming, expensive, and full of legal jargon.
Enter: Duckpins.
Now, you can create your estate plan without leaving your sofa. Answer a few questions, and Duckpins can help you create your legal documents in under an hour. You can attend a virtual meeting to have your documents notarized and executed (a necessary step for them to be legally binding). We even make it easy to store and share documents with the people who will need them—like adult children, parents, and trusted family and friends.
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