An estate planning questionnaire is the intake form your attorney uses to collect everything needed to draft your will, trust, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives. It covers your family, your assets and debts, your existing documents, who you want to inherit, and who you want in charge if you can’t act for yourself. The more complete and accurate your answers, the fewer drafting rounds you’ll go through and the fewer surprises will surface later. Most people underestimate how much detail the form asks for. Preparing before you start is the difference between one productive meeting and three catch-up calls.
Personal and Family Details
The form opens with identification: full legal names (including maiden names and prior aliases), dates of birth, and Social Security numbers for you and your spouse or partner. Use the name exactly as it appears on your government ID. A mismatch between the name on your will and the name on a deed or bank account can stall probate.
You’ll list your current address, how long you’ve lived in your state, and any real estate you own in other states. Residency governs which state’s law applies to your plan, and out-of-state property can trigger separate probate in each state where it sits. If either spouse holds citizenship in another country, flag it right away. The tax rules for a non-citizen spouse are different enough that your attorney needs to know before drafting anything.
Expect detailed questions about your family: all children (biological, adopted, and stepchildren), their dates of birth, addresses, and Social Security numbers. Grandchildren too. If you’ve been married before, the form asks about prior divorces and any continuing obligations such as alimony or property settlements, since those can affect what’s available to pass on. The goal is a complete picture of every person who might have a legal or moral claim on your estate.
Existing Documents and Professional Advisors
If you already have a will, trust, power of attorney, or healthcare directive, note where the originals are stored and when they were signed. Your attorney needs to review anything currently in force before drafting new documents to avoid conflicts or unintentional revocations. An existing irrevocable trust matters even more, since those generally can’t be undone.
Most forms also ask you to list your professional advisors: accountant, financial planner, insurance agent, and bank or trust officer. These people hold information your attorney will need, and coordinating among them prevents the gaps that cause problems after death. If you’ve made significant lifetime gifts and filed gift tax returns, note the amounts, dates, and recipients. Those gifts reduce your available estate and gift tax exclusion.
Asset and Liability Inventory
This is usually the longest section and the one that takes the most preparation. Your attorney needs a complete picture of what you own, what you owe, and how each asset is titled.
Real Estate and Financial Accounts
List every property: home, vacation property, rental units, undeveloped land. For each, provide the address, how title is held (sole ownership, joint tenancy, tenancy in common, community property), the approximate market value, and any mortgage balance. Title controls whether the property passes through your will or transfers automatically to a co-owner at death.
Financial accounts get the same treatment: checking, savings, brokerage accounts, certificates of deposit. Note the institution, account type, approximate balance, and how ownership is titled. Retirement accounts like 401(k) plans and IRAs deserve special attention because they typically pass by beneficiary designation rather than through your will, which means they skip probate entirely. If you haven’t updated those beneficiary forms since a divorce or a child’s birth, this is where that oversight surfaces.
Life Insurance and Employee Benefits
For each life insurance policy, record the insurer, policy number, face value, cash surrender value, who owns the policy, and who’s named as beneficiary. Ownership matters: if you own the policy on your own life, the death benefit counts as part of your taxable estate. If someone else owns it, or it’s held in an irrevocable life insurance trust, it generally doesn’t.
Employee benefits round this out: pensions, profit-sharing plans, stock options, deferred compensation, and group life insurance through your employer. Many of these also pass by beneficiary designation, making them non-probate assets your will doesn’t control.
Business Interests
If you own part of a business, whether a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation, list the entity name, your ownership percentage, and whether a buy-sell agreement exists. Buy-sell agreements can override what your will says about your business interest, so your attorney needs to review any existing agreement before drafting your plan.
Tangible Personal Property
Jewelry, artwork, furniture, vehicles, collections, firearms. These items cause more family disputes than almost anything else. Many states, following the Uniform Probate Code, let you create a separate written list that assigns specific personal items to specific people without amending your will. The list must be signed and describe items and recipients clearly, and your will must reference it for it to be enforceable. You can update the list anytime without involving your attorney.
Debts and Liabilities
A complete inventory includes what you owe: mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit card balances, personal loans, and any outstanding tax obligations. Debts get paid from your estate before anyone inherits. If you’ve guaranteed someone else’s debt or have potential legal liabilities, mention those too.
Digital Assets
Your plan is incomplete if it ignores digital assets. Most questionnaires now ask about online accounts and electronic records. If yours doesn’t, raise it with your attorney. Nearly every state has adopted some version of a law governing fiduciary access to digital assets, but your executor still needs to know what exists and how to reach it.
Organize your digital footprint into rough categories:
- Financial accounts: online banking, brokerage platforms, payment services like PayPal or Venmo, cryptocurrency wallets, and any digital currency holdings.
- Business accounts: domain names, websites, proprietary software, client databases, cloud storage for business records, and tax preparation accounts.
- Personal accounts: email, cloud photo storage, digital music and media libraries, loyalty programs, and online shopping accounts.
- Social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and similar platforms, each of which has its own policy on what happens to an account after death.
For each account, record the platform and username, and note how your executor can access it. Don’t put passwords in the questionnaire or the will itself, since both can become public. A password manager with emergency access, or a sealed letter stored with your estate plan, works better.
Who Gets What
This is the core question: who inherits, and in what shares? You’ll name primary beneficiaries (the people who inherit first) and contingent beneficiaries (the backups if a primary beneficiary dies before you do). The form typically distinguishes between specific gifts and the residuary estate. A specific gift is a particular item or dollar amount going to a named person, like $10,000 to a niece or a piece of jewelry to a friend. The residuary estate is everything left after debts are paid and specific gifts are distributed.
You’ll also be asked how to handle shares if a beneficiary dies before you. Per stirpes means a deceased beneficiary’s share passes down to their children. If you leave equal shares to your three children per stirpes and one child dies before you, that child’s share goes to their kids rather than being split between your two surviving children. Per capita means only surviving beneficiaries inherit, and a deceased beneficiary’s share gets redistributed among the living ones. Most people with children and grandchildren choose per stirpes to keep each family branch’s inheritance intact.
For charitable gifts, have the organization’s full legal name and federal tax identification number ready. Charities post this information on their websites for exactly this purpose. A charitable bequest can be a specific dollar amount, a percentage of the residuary, or a contingent gift that only takes effect if your primary beneficiaries don’t survive you.
Who Runs the Plan
The questionnaire asks you to name the people who will carry out your wishes. Each role is distinct, and picking the wrong person for any of them is one of the most consequential mistakes in estate planning. Name at least one successor for each role in case your first choice can’t serve.
Executor and Trustee
Your executor (called a personal representative in some states) handles probate: gathering assets, paying debts, filing tax returns, and distributing what’s left. If your plan includes a trust, the trustee manages the trust assets on the terms you’ve set. These can be the same person, but they don’t have to be.
The form may ask whether you want to waive the executor’s bond. A surety bond protects beneficiaries if the executor mishandles funds. Waiving it saves the premium but removes a layer of protection. If you trust your executor and the beneficiaries agree, waiving it is common. If the estate is complex or there’s any family tension, keeping the bond is safer. Executor compensation varies by state; some set fees by statute, others leave it to the court. You may be asked whether you want to specify compensation in your will or leave it to default rules.
Guardian for Minor Children
If you have children under 18, naming a guardian is arguably the most important decision on the entire form. The guardian raises your children if both parents die. Name a successor guardian too. Courts give heavy weight to the parent’s written choice, so leaving this blank means a judge decides on limited information. Think about values, lifestyle, location, and willingness as much as financial capacity.
Power of Attorney Agents
You’ll name agents for two types of power of attorney. A financial power of attorney authorizes someone to manage your money, pay bills, and handle property if you become incapacitated. A healthcare power of attorney (sometimes called a healthcare proxy) authorizes someone to make medical decisions for you. Provide full legal names, current addresses, and phone numbers so agents can be reached quickly. Name successors for both roles.
Healthcare Directives and End-of-Life Wishes
The form typically asks about your preferences for medical care if you can’t speak for yourself. This information feeds into two related documents. A living will covers end-of-life decisions specifically: mechanical ventilation, tube feeding, dialysis, resuscitation if you’re terminally ill or permanently unconscious. A broader advance healthcare directive combines those instructions with the appointment of a healthcare agent who can make real-time decisions for situations the living will didn’t anticipate, like choosing between treatment options or selecting a care facility.
Expect questions about which life-sustaining treatments you do or don’t want, whether you want to donate organs, and who you trust to make the calls the documents can’t predict. Ask your attorney about a separate HIPAA authorization as well. Federal privacy rules can prevent even a healthcare agent from accessing your records without explicit written permission, and a standalone release keeps that door open.
Many forms also ask about funeral and burial preferences: traditional burial, cremation, disposition of ashes, body donation to medical research, or green burial options. These instructions aren’t always legally binding the way a will is, but documenting them spares your family from guessing.
Situations to Flag Early
A few facts change what your attorney drafts, and the questionnaire is the right place to raise them.
Non-citizen spouse. The unlimited marital deduction, which normally lets spouses transfer assets to each other tax-free at death, does not apply when the surviving spouse is not a U.S. citizen.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 2523 – Gift to Spouse Preserving the marital deduction generally requires a Qualified Domestic Trust (QDOT) with a U.S. trustee and an election on the estate tax return.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 2056A – Qualified Domestic Trust Note citizenship status on the form.
A beneficiary with a disability. An outright inheritance could disqualify a child or dependent from Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income. Federal law permits a special needs trust that holds assets for the beneficiary’s benefit without counting as a resource for eligibility.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1396p – Liens, Adjustments and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets Identifying the beneficiary on the questionnaire lets your attorney build in the right structure from the start.
A potentially taxable estate. For 2026, the federal estate tax basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 per person, and married couples can effectively double that through portability if the executor of the first spouse to die files a federal estate tax return and makes the election.4Internal Revenue Service. What’s New — Estate and Gift Tax5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 2010 – Unified Credit Against Estate Tax The annual gift tax exclusion for 2026 is $19,000 per recipient.6Internal Revenue Service. Rev Proc 2025-32 Your asset totals on the questionnaire tell your attorney whether tax planning belongs in your documents.
How To Prepare Before You Fill It Out
The biggest mistake isn’t answering a question wrong. It’s showing up unprepared and leaving sections blank because the information wasn’t handy. Before you start, gather:
- Property deeds showing exactly how title is held
- Recent statements for every bank, brokerage, and retirement account
- Life insurance policies with face values and current beneficiary designations
- Business agreements including operating agreements, partnership agreements, and any buy-sell arrangements
- Existing estate planning documents such as prior wills, trusts, and powers of attorney
- Tax returns from the past two or three years, plus any gift tax returns you’ve filed
Use your full legal name as it appears on government identification. Nicknames create identity confusion during probate. List exact account numbers and the legal names of financial institutions rather than abbreviations.
Most attorneys deliver the questionnaire through a secure online portal or a paper packet you return before your first meeting. Expect the office to take several business days to review it before scheduling a consultation. That meeting is where the real planning happens: the attorney uses your data to recommend specific documents and strategies. The more complete the questionnaire, the more productive the conversation and the fewer follow-up rounds before your documents are finalized. Flat fees for a complete plan (will, trust, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives) generally range from around $500 for straightforward situations to $5,000 or more for complex estates involving business interests, blended families, or tax planning. Ask about pricing when you request the questionnaire, not after.