In a few days I will leave the Adirondacks and head home to Michigan. I just finished one last thing I wanted to do with my dad. Review his estate plan. We sat down together and went through his accounts and beneficiary designations to make sure everything that was supposed to flow into his revocable trust actually would.

Death Readiness Dispatch

August 26, 2026

Hi there,

 

In a few days I will leave the Adirondacks and head home to Michigan. I just finished one last thing I wanted to do with my dad. Review his estate plan. We sat down together and went through his accounts and beneficiary designations to make sure everything that was supposed to flow into his revocable trust actually would.

 

And we found something. One account still listed my mom as the beneficiary. My mom died almost 14 years ago. My dad has an estate plan. He has a trust. His daughter is an estate planning attorney who hosts an entire podcast about this stuff.

 

And still, there was a beneficiary designation that hadn't kept up with his life. So we fixed it, right there from the porch. And that is exactly why one of the most important estate planning questions isn't: “Do I have a trust?” It's: “What happens to each of my assets when I die?”

Your Pour-Over Will Is a Backup Plan

If you create a revocable trust to avoid probate, you may also have something called a pour-over Will.  If you forgot to put something into your trust, your pour-over Will takes care of it. Except there’s a catch: The asset has to go through probate first. Your pour-over Will tells us where that asset should go after probate. It doesn’t eliminate the probate step.

 

I like to think of probate as a bridge that gets an asset from its deceased owner to its next owner. Your pour-over Will tells us where the asset should go after it crosses the bridge. It doesn’t eliminate the bridge.

One Question. Every Asset.

If avoiding probate is part of your estate plan, don’t just ask: “Do I have a trust?” Instead, make a list:

🏡 Your house
🏦 Your checking and savings accounts
📈 Your brokerage accounts
💰 Your retirement accounts
📋 Your life insurance

 

And ask the same question about each one: What happens to this asset when I die? Maybe it's already owned by your trust. It might have a beneficiary or payable-on-death designation. It might be owned jointly with someone else with survivorship rights. But if you get to an asset and realize, “It's just in my individual name, and there's nothing telling it where to go next,” you've found a probate asset.

Why Your Pour-Over Will Won’t Avoid Probate

This week, I explain:

✅ What a pour-over Will actually does,
✅ Why having a revocable trust doesn’t automatically keep everything out of probate,
✅ What it means to “fund” your trust,
✅ How account ownership and beneficiary designations fit into the picture,
✅ What actually happens when an asset has to travel through probate before reaching your trust,
✅ And why leaving one asset outside your trust doesn’t necessarily mean your entire estate plan has failed.

Let's Talk Estate Planning Live

On September 9, I’ll be giving a virtual presentation hosted by Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County about some of the estate planning mistakes I see most often—and how to avoid them.

 

We’ll talk about what your Will actually controls, beneficiary designations that can override your plan, lifetime gifts with unexpected tax consequences, planning for your home in a blended family, and even the surprising role estate planning law played in a famous true crime case.

 

I’d love to see you there! September 9, virtual and free to attend.

Thanks for being here.

PS: If you’re in Tennessee: You don’t need an estate planning attorney for a daughter to make sure your plan gets this kind of attention. When I work with clients, we don’t just create documents. We talk about your assets, how they pass, and how all the pieces are supposed to work together.