You Made a Will. Here’s What Comes Next
By Ian Herrick — 2026-08-24
You made a will. That matters.
Maybe Make-A-Will Month finally moved it to the top of your list. Maybe you had been meaning to do it for years. Either way, you signed the documents and took a step many families never get around to taking.
But signing a will is the beginning of family planning, not the end. A will does not address beneficiary designations, trust funding, incapacity, or the need to keep your plan current.
If you have a will, here is what to review next.
Start by understanding what a will does
A will is a legal document that tells a court what you want to happen to your assets after you die. That is its scope.
It does not keep your family out of court. In most states, assets that pass through a will must go through probate, which is a public process that can take months, cost thousands in fees, and freeze your assets while it is happening.
A will also controls only what is addressed in the document. If you told someone you were leaving them your car but that instruction is not reflected in the will, that person may contest the will in court. Will contests are more common than most people realize, and even unsuccessful contests can add cost, delay, and family conflict to an already difficult time.
A will does not control assets with their own beneficiary designations. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and bank accounts with transfer-on-death designations pass outside the will, according to the name on the form you completed.
And a will does nothing if you are incapacitated rather than dead. If you are in an accident and cannot make decisions for yourself, your will does not activate. Your family may have no legal authority to manage your finances or make medical decisions without going to court first.
The bottom line: A will is one part of a complete plan. Here is what the rest may involve.
Step 1: Review every beneficiary designation
When you sign a will, you may still have another set of documents controlling a significant portion of your assets: beneficiary designation forms. These forms operate outside your will.
When a will conflicts with a beneficiary designation, the form controls. A judge does not have the authority to override it, and your will does not override it. The name on the form is the person who receives the money.
Common problems include a former spouse still named on a retirement account, a parent who has passed away, or a child named directly as beneficiary. When a child receives money directly, that money is subject to court-supervised guardianship until the child turns 18, regardless of what your will says about managing it.
Review every retirement account, life insurance policy, and bank account with a transfer-on-death designation. Each should have a primary beneficiary and a contingent beneficiary who reflect your family as it exists today.
The bottom line: Your will does not control these forms. The forms control themselves. Reviewing them is one of the first things I walk through with families during a Trust Dad Planning Session.
Step 2: Confirm that your trust is funded
If you received a trust along with your will, ask one specific question: Are my assets actually in the trust?
A trust controls only what is inside it. Signing a trust creates a legal container. Transferring assets into that container, known as funding the trust, is a separate step that many families never complete.
If your house, bank accounts, and investment accounts remain titled in your own name rather than the name of your trust, they go through probate regardless of what the trust says.
Unfunded trusts are one of the most common estate-planning failures I encounter. A family may pay for a trust, assume the estate is protected, and later find that loved ones still end up in probate court because the assets were never transferred. The trust document is in a folder. The assets never made it in.
If you do not know whether your trust is funded, ask. If it is not, funding it is the next priority.
The bottom line: A signed but unfunded trust offers no more protection than no trust at all. Funding is not automatic. It has to be done deliberately, often with help.
Step 3: Prepare for incapacity
A will activates when you die. Separate legal documents are needed for the rest of your life, including any period when you are alive but unable to make decisions.
At a minimum, a complete plan includes a durable power of attorney, which gives someone you trust legal authority to manage your finances if you are incapacitated; a healthcare directive, also called a living will or advance directive, which tells medical providers what you want if you cannot speak for yourself; and a healthcare proxy or medical power of attorney, which names someone to make medical decisions for you.
I also make sure clients have a HIPAA authorization in place. It allows the people they designate to receive information from medical providers. Without one, your spouse may not be able to get basic updates about your condition from a hospital.
If you made a will and nothing else, you have a plan for what happens when you die. You do not have a plan for what happens if you are incapacitated. For most families, incapacity is actually the more likely scenario, and the more disruptive one for the people managing everything.
The bottom line: A will is one document in a complete plan. Incapacity documents are equally important and often missing entirely.
Step 4: Know who will review your plan
Your life will change, and your plan needs to change with it.
When I work with clients through an ongoing Trust Dad Planning Process, we review the plan at least every 3 years. I re-verify beneficiary designations, check that the trust remains funded with new accounts or property, confirm that the guardian named for your children still makes sense, make sure the agents in your incapacity documents are still the right people, and confirm that the plan reflects your current situation.
Gaps that hurt families are not usually the result of bad planning at the start. They are often the result of good planning that was never updated. A divorce, a new baby, a move to a different state, a significant change in assets, or the death of a named beneficiary can quietly create a gap in a plan that looked complete when it was signed.
A Trust Dad Lawyer stays connected with your family over time. The relationship is part of the plan.
The bottom line: A plan you review is a plan that can work when your family needs it. A plan you sign and file away may be missing important updates.
Why a document platform may not be enough
If you made your will through an online platform, or through an attorney who handed you documents and moved on, I am genuinely glad you did it. Something is better than nothing.
But a platform did not check your beneficiary designations. It did not ask whether your trust is funded. It did not prepare your healthcare directive or power of attorney. It did not consider what happens if you are incapacitated rather than dead, whether the guardian you named is still the right person, or whether your plan should be reviewed as your life changes.
It also did not explain who to name in those documents or what you are asking them to do. An AI can give you a definition of a successor trustee. A lawyer can explain what happens when a child turns 21 and asks the trustee for $500,000 to buy a Lamborghini. That is the job. Who you name matters enormously.
I have seen clients name aging parents as successor trustee for a toddler, even though those parents may not be around to manage anything for the next three decades. Healthcare agents carry the same weight. I have seen that role go to the wrong person, with outcomes families do not recover from easily.
A platform generates a document. A lawyer helps you understand who belongs in it and what you are putting them in charge of.
When I sit down with a client for a Trust Dad Planning Session, I look at the full picture: what you own, who you want to protect, what situations your family could face, and what documents and structures address those situations. The goal is not a folder of signed papers. It is a plan that functions the way you intended when your family needs it.
The bottom line: Online tools can create a document. They cannot do the thinking that makes a plan work for your specific family.
You made a will. Now review the rest.
If you made a will this month, you took a meaningful step. Now make sure the rest of your plan supports what you intended.
I offer a Trust Dad Planning Session to review what you have in place and what may still be missing. Start by booking a complimentary 15-minute discovery call, and we can talk about where you actually stand.
This material is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute ERISA, tax, legal, or investment advice. You should separately consult an appropriate professional for advice tailored to your specific needs and circumstances.