August is Make-A-Will Month, which is a useful reminder to finally take care of something many people have been putting off. According to Trust & Will’s 2026 Estate Planning Report, only 26% of U.S. adults currently have a will, and 56% have no estate planning documents at all.
I would certainly rather see someone have a will than nothing at all. The problem is that many people sign a will and walk away believing they have completed their estate planning when, in reality, some of the most important questions have not been addressed.
A will has an important job, but it is only one estate planning tool. It does not necessarily keep your family out of probate, provide a complete plan if you become incapacitated, control every asset you own, or fully address what should happen if you have minor children.
The better question is not simply, “Do I have a will?” It is whether you have a plan that will actually work for your family when they need it.
What Does a Will Actually Do in California?
A will allows you to state who should receive property that is controlled by the will after your death. You can also nominate the person you would like to serve as executor and, if you have minor children, nominate the person you would want the court to appoint as their guardian.
Those are important decisions. But there are limits to what the document can accomplish.
A will does not avoid probate. In California, assets that are subject to probate may still have to go through a court process even when there is a perfectly valid will. The will tells the court and your executor what you wanted to happen; it does not eliminate the administration process itself. California Courts specifically explains that property may need to go through probate even when the person who died had a will.
A will also does not give the person you named as executor immediate, unrestricted authority over probate assets simply because you have died. When formal probate is required, the court appoints the personal representative, and the Letters issued by the court are used to establish that person’s authority when dealing with banks, financial institutions, and others.
That can matter enormously to a family dealing with a home, bills, a business, or other financial obligations after a death. It is one reason we look carefully at how assets are owned rather than assuming a will has taken care of everything.
A Living Trust Can Address Problems a Will Cannot
For many California families, a revocable living trust is an important part of the estate plan because assets properly owned by the trust can generally be administered after death without going through formal probate.
The word “properly” matters. Creating a trust and signing it is not enough if the assets that should be connected to it never make their way into the plan.
I have seen this misunderstanding many times. Someone proudly tells me, “I have a trust,” but when we look at the assets, the home may never have been transferred into it, new accounts were opened years later and never addressed, or the beneficiary designations no longer match the rest of the planning.
A trust is a legal structure, but it still has to be implemented. California Courts similarly explains that property placed into a living trust should generally pass to the beneficiaries without probate, while assets with named beneficiaries or survivorship features may also transfer outside formal probate.
This is why I spend time looking at the assets themselves, not just the estate planning binder. How is the house titled? Who is named on the accounts? Which assets have beneficiary designations? Are there assets that should be owned by the trust? Has anything significant been purchased or opened since the plan was completed?
Those details are where a plan either works or does not.
Your Estate Plan Also Needs to Work While You Are Alive
One of the biggest limitations of a will is that it does nothing for you during your lifetime.
If you are seriously injured, suffer a stroke, develop dementia, or otherwise become unable to make your own decisions, your family cannot pull out your will and use it to manage your finances or make healthcare decisions for you.
That requires incapacity planning.
A comprehensive California estate plan will often include an Advance Health Care Directive identifying who you want to make healthcare decisions if you cannot make them yourself. It may include a durable power of attorney giving someone authority to handle financial and legal matters, and a properly structured revocable living trust can provide a mechanism for a successor trustee to manage trust assets if you become unable to do so yourself.
The details matter because these documents do different jobs. Someone who has authority to make healthcare decisions does not automatically have authority over your bank accounts, and someone acting under a power of attorney may have different authority from a successor trustee administering assets held in your trust.
When I design an estate plan, I want to know what would actually happen if the client were alive but unable to manage their own affairs. Who would step in? What would that person be able to do? Would the assets and legal documents give them the authority they need, or would the family end up in court trying to obtain it?
Estate planning is as much about protecting you during your lifetime as it is about deciding what happens after you die.
If You Have Minor Children, Naming a Guardian Is Only Part of the Plan
Parents often tell me that their primary reason for finally creating an estate plan is their children. That makes sense, but this is another area where simply having a will can create a false sense that everything has been handled.
In California, a parent can nominate a guardian for a minor child in a will. The parent’s nomination is important, but a guardian is ultimately appointed through the court process. California Courts explains that a guardianship gives a nonparent the legal responsibility and authority to care for a child, including making decisions concerning medical care, education, housing, and other aspects of the child’s life.
There can also be a practical gap between an emergency involving the parents and the formal appointment of a guardian. California has a process for requesting a temporary guardianship when an emergency requires someone to act before a general guardianship can be completed, but that still involves a court proceeding.
This is why I want parents to think beyond simply putting a guardian’s name into a will. Who are the trusted people nearby who could care for your children immediately if neither parent were available? Do those people know you have chosen them? Do they know whom to call and where your planning documents can be found?
Then there is the longer-term question of who should actually raise your children. I encourage parents to think carefully about the people they are choosing, including their values, parenting style, family situation, age, health, location, and willingness to take on the responsibility. We also name backups because circumstances can change dramatically between the day you sign your plan and the day someone might need to serve.
Through the Kids Protection Plan® process, we address both the legal nominations and the practical planning surrounding the children so the people you trust have clear guidance if an emergency occurs. We can also document information about your wishes, values, and the things you would want the people raising your children to understand about your family.
Those personal instructions do not replace the legal guardianship process, but they can give the people you have chosen something a court form never could: a much clearer understanding of how you hoped your children would be cared for.
A Will Does Not Necessarily Control Your Beneficiary Designations
Another common misconception is that once your will or trust says who receives your property, those instructions control everything you own.
They do not.
Life insurance, retirement accounts, payable-on-death accounts, transfer-on-death accounts, and certain jointly owned property may pass according to the beneficiary designation or form of ownership rather than according to your will. California Courts specifically identifies life insurance, retirement accounts, beneficiary-designated accounts, joint tenancy property, and property already held in a living trust as examples of assets that may pass outside formal probate.
That is why beneficiary designations are part of the estate planning conversation.
Maybe you named your parents on a retirement account when you were 25 and never changed it after getting married. Perhaps a former spouse is still named on an old life insurance policy. Maybe you named minor children directly without considering what happens if they inherit while they are still young.
Even when the beneficiaries are the right people, we still need to think about whether they should receive the asset outright or whether the larger estate plan is intended to provide additional protection.
The legal documents and the financial accounts should be telling the same story.
A Good Plan Also Addresses How and When Your Family Inherits
A will can say that your children receive your estate, but that does not necessarily answer the more important question of how they should receive it.
If your child inherited a significant amount of money at 18, would that be the outcome you actually want? What if the child later goes through a divorce, has creditor problems, develops an addiction, struggles with money, has special needs, or simply is not ready to manage a large inheritance?
Trust planning gives us much more flexibility to think about those possibilities.
For some families, an outright inheritance is appropriate. For others, it makes more sense to keep assets in trust and give the trustee discretion to use them for the beneficiary while also creating protections around the inheritance.
There is no universal formula for the “right” age to inherit or the “right” trust structure. I want to understand the beneficiary, the family relationships, the assets involved, and what the client is actually trying to accomplish before making those decisions.
This is one reason I am not a fan of estate planning that begins with choosing documents from a menu. The right documents should come out of the planning conversation, not the other way around.
Estate Planning Should Preserve More Than Your Money
There is another part of planning that gets very little attention when the conversation begins and ends with a will.
Your family will inherit financial assets, but they will also inherit your absence.
They may have questions about decisions you made, family history, the values you wanted to pass along, what you hoped for your children, and stories they never thought to ask while you were here.
Interestingly, Trust & Will’s 2026 survey found that 41% of Americans identified memories and relationships as the most meaningful legacy they expect to leave, while another 23% identified values, lessons, or principles. Financial assets and property ranked below those responses.
That does not surprise me. Money matters, especially when people depend on you, but most of us know instinctively that our legacy is bigger than the balance of an investment account.
A thoughtful estate planning process can create space for those conversations too. What do you want your children to know about you? What values shaped the decisions you made? What family stories should not disappear? What would you want the people you love to hear from you if you were no longer here to tell them yourself?
Those things may not change who legally owns the house, but they can become some of the most valuable things you leave behind.
The Goal Is Not More Documents. It Is a Plan That Works.
Make-A-Will Month is a worthwhile reminder, particularly when so many Americans have done no planning at all. If it motivates you to finally begin, use it.
But do not make the mistake of assuming the job is finished because you signed a will.
A complete estate plan should consider what happens if you become incapacitated, how your assets are owned, whether beneficiary designations match your wishes, whether probate can and should be avoided, who will care for minor children, how beneficiaries should receive their inheritance, and whether the people you have chosen will actually have the authority and information they need.
It also needs to change when your life changes. A plan created before a marriage, divorce, new child, home purchase, business, major inheritance, death in the family, or other significant event may no longer reflect the life you have today.
That is what I want to accomplish through the Life & Legacy Planning® process. We are not simply preparing a stack of legal documents. We are looking at your family, your assets, your incapacity planning, the people you trust, and what you want to happen in real life, and then creating the legal structure around those decisions.
If you already have an estate plan, we can review it to determine whether the documents, asset ownership, beneficiary designations, and other pieces still work together. If you have been putting planning off because you were not sure where to begin, contact us or schedule a 15-minute introductory call to learn more about our planning process.