A will preparation worksheet is the organized packet of personal, financial, and decision-maker information you assemble before meeting with an estate planning attorney, so the drafting conversation can focus on legal strategy instead of hunting for account numbers. Walking in prepared usually means a lower bill and fewer follow-up meetings. The sections below cover what belongs in that packet and why each piece matters.
Personal and Family Information
Start with full legal names, exactly as they appear on government identification, for yourself and every person you plan to mention in the will. Record current residential addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers for you, your spouse, and your children. Misspelled names or transposed digits can stall probate or give someone grounds to challenge the document.
Note your marital status and any prior marriages. Former spouses may retain legal claims depending on divorce settlement terms and your state’s laws, so your attorney needs the full picture. List every child, including children from previous relationships and children who were legally adopted. If you have stepchildren you want to include, flag them separately, because they may not inherit automatically under your state’s intestacy rules.
Round out the section with contact information for close relatives, your primary care physician, your financial advisor, and any attorney you already work with. The National Institute on Aging recommends keeping this kind of directory alongside your estate documents so your family can reach the right people quickly if something happens to you.1National Institute on Aging. Getting Your Affairs in Order Checklist – Documents to Prepare for the Future
Financial Assets and Liabilities
Pull together recent statements for every financial account you own. For each bank account, record the institution name, account type (checking, savings, money market, certificate of deposit), account number, and approximate balance. Do the same for investment and brokerage accounts, including any employer-sponsored retirement plans like a 401(k) or 403(b) and any individual retirement accounts. Recent quarterly statements give your attorney the snapshot they need.
Real estate gets its own section. For each property, note the full street address, how title is held (solely, jointly, through an entity), the estimated market value, and where the physical deed is stored. Do the same for vehicles, listing VIN numbers and the location of each title document. If you own a business interest, whether an LLC membership, corporate shares, or a partnership stake, describe it and note where the governing documents are filed.
Liabilities need equal attention, because your estate’s net value is what your heirs actually receive. List every mortgage, auto loan, personal loan, student loan, and credit card balance, along with the creditor’s name and approximate payoff amount. A recent credit report is an efficient way to catch debts you might otherwise forget. Your executor will have to settle these obligations before distributing anything.
Final Expenses
Funeral and burial costs hit your estate before almost any other expense. The median cost of a traditional funeral with burial runs roughly $8,300, and cremation averages around $6,280. Cemetery fees for a plot, headstone, and grave opening can add another $3,000 to $10,000 on top of that. If you have preferences about burial versus cremation, a specific cemetery, or religious customs, writing them down gives your family clear guidance and helps your executor budget for an expense that is often larger than people expect.
If you’ve prepaid funeral costs or carry a final expense insurance policy, record the policy number or contract details so your executor doesn’t duplicate the expense out of estate funds.
Digital Accounts
Digital accounts are easy to overlook and notoriously difficult for heirs to access. Make a separate inventory of email accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage, online banking logins, cryptocurrency wallets, domain names, and any accounts with stored value like payment apps or loyalty programs. For each, note the platform name and associated email address. Do not write passwords directly on the worksheet; instead, reference where they can be found, such as a password manager, an encrypted file, or a sealed envelope stored with a trusted person.
Nearly every state has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which gives your executor legal authority to manage your digital accounts. The process is smoother if you have already used each platform’s built-in legacy or inactive-account tools to designate someone.
Assets That Pass Outside Your Will
This is where most estate plans quietly fall apart. Certain assets transfer automatically at death based on ownership structure or beneficiary designations, and your will has zero say over them. If your will leaves everything to your children but your 401(k) beneficiary form still names your ex-spouse, your ex-spouse gets the 401(k). The beneficiary designation wins every time, because those assets never enter probate.
Common assets that bypass a will include:
- Retirement accounts: 401(k)s, IRAs, 403(b)s, and pensions pass to the named beneficiary on file with the plan administrator.
- Life insurance: the death benefit goes to whoever is listed on the policy.
- Jointly held property: real estate or bank accounts held as joint tenants with right of survivorship automatically pass to the surviving owner.
- Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts: bank and brokerage accounts with POD or TOD designations transfer directly to the named individual without probate.
- Trust assets: anything you have already transferred into a living trust distributes according to the trust terms.
Dedicate a section of the worksheet to listing every account with a beneficiary designation and the name currently on file. Then verify those names are still correct. Outdated designations are one of the most common and most preventable estate planning mistakes, and the fix takes ten minutes with a phone call to the account custodian.
Fiduciaries and Beneficiaries
The people you choose to carry out your plan matter as much as the plan itself. Record full legal names, current addresses, and phone numbers for each person filling a role.
Executor
Your executor (called a personal representative in some states) manages probate: inventorying assets, paying debts and taxes, and distributing what remains. Pick someone organized, trustworthy, and willing to handle paperwork and deadlines. Name at least one backup in case your first choice can’t serve. If the will doesn’t specify compensation, most states allow the executor to claim a “reasonable” fee, which probate courts evaluate based on time spent, estate complexity, and local norms. If you want to set the fee yourself, note that preference so your attorney can include it in the will.
Guardian for Minor Children
If you have children under 18, naming a guardian is arguably the most important decision on the worksheet. Without a designation, a court will choose for you based on its own assessment of the child’s best interest. Name a primary guardian and an alternate, and have a real conversation with both before you finalize anything. Courts almost always honor a parent’s written choice unless there’s a compelling reason not to.
Trustee
If your plan includes a trust, whether for minor children, a special-needs beneficiary, or tax planning, you need a trustee to manage trust assets. This can be the same person as your executor, a different individual, or a professional trust company. The skill set is different from an executor’s role: a trustee may manage investments and make distributions over many years rather than wrapping up affairs in a few months.
Beneficiaries and How They Inherit
List every person or organization you want to receive something, along with what they should get. You can assign specific items (“my mother’s engagement ring to my daughter Sarah”), specific dollar amounts, or percentage shares of the overall estate. Be precise when describing physical property, particularly items that look alike or could be confused with something else.
For each beneficiary, decide what happens if they die before you do. Under a “per stirpes” distribution, a deceased beneficiary’s share passes down to their own children. Under a “per capita” distribution, that share is divided equally among the remaining surviving beneficiaries. The choice can dramatically change who gets what, so note your preference for each gift. Your attorney will build the right language from there.
Powers of Attorney and Advance Directives
A will only takes effect after you die. If you become incapacitated while still alive, a will does nothing for you. That gap is why powers of attorney and advance directives belong in the same planning packet.
Financial Power of Attorney
A financial power of attorney authorizes someone you trust (your “agent”) to handle money matters on your behalf: paying bills, managing investments, filing taxes, dealing with insurance claims. A “durable” power of attorney remains effective even after you become incapacitated, which is the whole point. Some people prefer a “springing” power of attorney that only activates upon incapacity, but proving incapacity can create delays when your agent needs to act quickly. Record who you want as your agent, a backup agent, and any specific limits on their authority.
Healthcare Advance Directive
An advance directive (sometimes called a living will) documents your wishes about medical treatment if you cannot communicate, including decisions about life support, resuscitation, and pain management. A separate healthcare proxy or medical power of attorney names someone to make medical decisions on your behalf. Many states combine these into a single form. The NIA recommends having both documents in place well before any health crisis and sharing copies with your healthcare proxy, your physician, and your family.1National Institute on Aging. Getting Your Affairs in Order Checklist – Documents to Prepare for the Future
List the agents you’ve chosen for both financial and healthcare authority on the worksheet, along with contact information for each. When you meet with your attorney, these documents are typically prepared alongside your will as a package.
A Quick Note on Estate and Gift Tax
For 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15,000,000 per individual. Married couples who plan correctly can shield up to $30 million combined. This threshold was made permanent and indexed to inflation going forward by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025.2Internal Revenue Service. Whats New – Estate and Gift Tax Estates worth less than the exemption owe no federal estate tax, which means the vast majority of Americans won’t face a federal estate tax bill.
The annual gift tax exclusion for 2026 remains at $19,000 per recipient. You can give up to that amount to as many people as you want each year without filing a gift tax return or reducing your lifetime exemption. Married couples can give $38,000 per recipient by “splitting” gifts. For gifts to a non-citizen spouse, the 2026 annual exclusion is $194,000.3Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026 Even if your estate falls well under these thresholds, note the approximate total value on your worksheet so your attorney can determine whether you need any tax planning at all.
When to Revisit What You’ve Gathered
An estate plan isn’t something you finish once and forget. Certain life events should trigger an immediate review of both your worksheet and your executed documents:
- Marriage or divorce. Many states automatically revoke bequests to a former spouse after divorce, but not all do, and automatic revocation doesn’t create new provisions to replace the old ones.
- Birth or adoption of a child. New children need to be added, and guardianship designations may need revisiting.
- Death of a beneficiary or fiduciary. Your backup choices kick in only if you actually named backups. If you didn’t, the court fills the gap.
- Moving to a different state. Estate planning laws vary significantly by state. A will that was perfectly valid where you used to live may have problems under your new state’s rules.
- Major financial changes. A significant inheritance, business sale, or large debt changes your estate’s net value and may shift whether you need tax planning, a trust, or other tools.
- Changes in relationships. If you’ve fallen out with a named beneficiary or executor, or if someone previously excluded has become important to you, update accordingly.
Even without a triggering event, review the worksheet every three to five years. Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and insurance policies deserve their own annual check, since those forms are easy to forget about and impossible for your will to override.
Storing the Worksheet and Bringing It to Your Attorney
Keep the completed worksheet and your executed estate documents in a secure, accessible location. A fireproof home safe or a bank safe deposit box works, but make sure at least one trusted person knows where it is and can get to it. Safe deposit boxes can be tricky for heirs to access after a death, so weigh convenience against security. A digital backup on an encrypted drive adds a layer of protection against fire or flooding, with the password shared only with your executor or a trusted family member.
Consider preparing a letter of intent alongside the worksheet. This is a plain-language, non-binding document addressed to your executor and family that explains your reasoning, describes funeral preferences, lists where important documents and accounts are located, and provides personal wishes that don’t belong in a legal instrument. Courts don’t enforce a letter of intent, but families find them useful for context that a formal will can’t convey.
When you sit down with an attorney, the completed worksheet lets the meeting focus on legal strategy rather than data gathering. Attorney fees for a standard will typically range from $300 to $1,200, with complexity, geographic market, and whether you need additional documents like a trust or power of attorney driving the price higher. Walking in prepared often keeps you on the lower end of that range.