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In a second marriage, good intentions are not a plan. If you leave everything outright to a spouse, your children from a prior relationship may eventually receive nothing. If you bypass your spouse entirely, you risk hardship and estrangement. The solution is a written structure that provides for your spouse during life and guarantees inheritances for your children after. A revocable living trust—with the right sub‑trusts, beneficiary designations, and clear fiduciary roles—does this work gracefully and privately. This guide lays out a practical blueprint in plain English.

Start with your goals and assets—on paper

List major assets: the home (how it’s titled), retirement accounts, life insurance, brokerage accounts, and any business interests. Identify separate property (pre‑marital or inherited) and marital/community property. Then write your goals: support for the spouse (housing, income), inheritances for your children at defined times, and perhaps modest legacies for stepchildren who are part of your life. A plan that is clear about what you’re trying to achieve will guide how you draft.

Why a will alone is not enough

A will can direct property at death but can’t manage assets for a spouse or children over time, and it offers no incapacity continuity. Worse, if assets are held in joint tenancy or pass by beneficiary designation, the will may never touch them. A revocable living trust pulls the pieces together: you fund it during life, name a successor trustee, and write instructions for what happens at the first death and after.

Core blended‑family tools: survivor’s trust, QTIP‑style trust, and children’s trust

A common architecture has three moving parts at the first death:

• A survivor’s trust holding the surviving spouse’s property and anything you give them outright for flexibility.

• A QTIP‑style marital trust (often within a revocable trust plan) that gives the survivor income and access to principal for health and support but locks the remainder to your chosen beneficiaries—typically your children. This ensures financial support for the survivor without handing them the pen to redirect assets later.

• A children’s trust (or multiple) that releases funds in stages after the second death or provides earlier support for education and milestones.

If your wealth is modest and you prefer simplicity, you can skip the QTIP and rely on beneficiary designations to carve out life insurance for the children while leaving the rest for your spouse; but be deliberate and document the split.

Funding decisions that make or break the plan

Titling and designations carry the plan. Deed the home to the trust and decide whether the survivor has a right to occupy for life or for a term (for example, until remarriage or sale with an agreed sharing formula). Title non‑retirement brokerage accounts to the trust and assign them to the appropriate sub‑trusts at the first death. Set beneficiary designations so life insurance flows directly to a children’s trust if you want to guarantee a portion for them irrespective of market moves. Align 401(k)/IRA designations with your tax and timing goals; a spouse often remains primary to preserve spousal rollover options, with children per stirpes as contingent.

Trustee choices that prevent conflict

Naming the surviving spouse as sole trustee of a trust that ultimately benefits your children invites misunderstanding. Consider a co‑trustee structure: the spouse and a neutral co‑trustee (a trusted friend, sibling, or professional) serve together for the QTIP‑style trust; the children’s trust might have a different trustee who communicates well with your kids. Grant reasonable trustee powers and require annual statements to remainder beneficiaries. Transparency is a powerful antidote to suspicion.

Housing solutions that balance compassion and certainty

If your spouse will remain in the home, spell out who pays property taxes, insurance, maintenance, and capital repairs. Will the trust cover all costs, share them, or cap the support? If the home is too large, allow the trustee and spouse to downsize—sell, buy a suitable replacement, and preserve the remainder for the children. Decide what happens at remarriage; some couples end occupancy then, others don’t. Bad plans ignore housing; good plans script it.

Stepchildren and chosen family

Legally, stepchildren are not heirs unless you name them. If you want to include them, say so. Small specific gifts or a share of a residuary can convey love and avoid hurt. If your stepchildren are adults you helped raise, consider a specific percentage of a life‑insurance policy to them and the remainder to your children, with other assets supporting the spouse. A few lines prevent decades of interpretation.

No‑contest clauses and communication (in that order)

A no‑contest clause discourages weak challenges by penalizing a beneficiary who contests without good cause. Include one, drafted to your state’s standards. But documents don’t replace conversations. Share the outline of your plan with your spouse and adult children: “Here is how we’re balancing support and inheritance. Here is who will be trustee and why.” Surprises foment litigation. Clarity drains the audience for it.

Updating after moves and milestones

Moving to a new state? Refresh your pour‑over will, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives to state‑specific formats; your trust likely remains valid, but new execution pages reduce friction. After a child’s marriage, divorce, or new grandchildren, revisit ages and staged distribution provisions. After a major market move or sale of a business, reconsider which assets fund the QTIP‑style trust vs outright gifts.

With a trust‑based plan, beneficiaries will disagree about fewer facts because the facts will be on paper. You will have supported your spouse and kept your promises to your children—without a courtroom dictating either.

Draft a blended‑family trust that balances everyone’s interests: Online Revocable Living Trust → /product/online-living-trust/

Add a pour‑over will and guardianship nominations: Online Last Will & Testament → /product/online-last-will/

Prefer guided templates and funding checklists? Living Trust Kit → /product/living-trust-kit/

For many, preparing an estate plan can seem like a complicated and daunting process. Last wills, living wills, revocable living trusts, powers of attorney, advance directives, probate, executors and much more. There’s no shortage of things to consider. But – where should you start?

Fortunately, for most, preparing an estate plan is a fairly simple answer.

First and foremost, make a will. It’s not complicated and simply enables you to identify who you would like your assets to pass to after your death, who you want to appoint as your executor and who you would like to act as a guardian to your children in the event of your death. That’s all fairly straightforward stuff that most people can quickly get their head around. For those with young children, they can also use their last will to create a trust for their children.  That just means appointing someone to manage their children’s inheritance until such time as they are considered old enough to look after it themselves. Making a last will is a simple step in preparing an estate plan.

Next up, we would recommend a durable power of attorney. This is a simple estate planning document under which you appoint someone you trust to manage your legal and financial affairs in the event that, through illness, accident or otherwise, you are unable to manage your own affairs. Your trusted ‘deputy’ will have power to make decisions on your behalf for so long as you are unable to. Better still, you can give them as much or as little scope to do so as you please. For example, you can appoint your attorney to manage all of your affairs without restriction. You might give such authority to a family member or friend you trust implicitly. Alternately, you might give them very limited authority – such as the right to transfer money from one specific bank account to another specific bank account once per month, and in no greater amounts than $1,000 per transfer. You can be as specific as you want.

A legal and financial power of attorney can be a great tool in ensuring that your legal and financial affairs can be managed when you are unable to tend to them.

A healthcare power of attorney is similar to a financial power of attorney, except it allows your attorney to make healthcare decisions for you. They can give or withhold consent for all or specific medical treatments if you are unable to give or withhold consent yourself.

Apart from last wills and powers of attorney, you might also want to make a living will or a living trust when preparing an estate plan. We’ll cover these in detail in the next article. However, without a doubt, having a last will and power of attorney puts most people in a great position in so far as estate planning is concerned. Get those two right – and you’re definitely 90%+ there in terms of having a solid estate plan.

How Can EstateBee Help You? 

For more information on last wills or powers of attorney, read some of the other articles in the Learning Center.

You can also check out our estate planning book, which is called Estate Planning Essentials. It will introduce you, in plain English, to preparing an estate plan and provide you with a clear and simple path to making an estate plan – without the need for a lawyer.

Alternatively, check out EstateBee’s online estate planning software that allows you to make an online last will and testament and online power of attorney without the cost or need to engage a lawyer. Without a doubt, our estate planning software (which is state specific) is one of the most sophisticated pieces of online estate planning software on the market and has been a market leader for over 20 years.

If you have any questions about our products or services, please contact our  customer service team, who would be delighted to assist you.

 

Is now the right time to prepare your estate planning documents?

Unfortunately, as many of us know only too well, COVID doesn’t come without risk. For the lucky ones, symptoms are mild. For the less fortunate, COVID can mean several days in a hospital bed or even worse.

While we have limited ability to prevent an infection, we have much more control over how we plan for the possibility of infection. This principle holds true for estate planning. There are steps we can take now to ensure that, should we contract COVID, we and our families will be best placed to manage our affairs.

In this article, we look at some of the estate planning documents we can use in such a scenario.

1. Financial Power of Attorney

A financial power of attorney document is an estate planning document that gives a trusted agent legal authority to deal with a person’s financial affairs on their behalf. In doing so, the agent can take steps to protect and preserve the value of the person’s financial assets – be they business or personal assets.

For example, the agent can write checks, pay bills, transfer monies, buy and sell assets, lease out real estate, file returns, take out insurance and much more.

There are few restrictions on who can be appointed as an agent provided they have reached the age of majority in the state in which they are performing their duties and are mentally competent. Of course, you should only choose someone that you trust implicitly to act as your agent because your agent has virtually the same legal authority to make decisions on your behalf that you would ordinarily have. It’s also wise to appoint a back up agent in case your first nominee is unable or unwilling to act on your behalf. This can be easily done in your power of attorney document.

2. Health Care Power of Attorney

Next up is a health care power of attorney document or a HCPOA as they are often referred to. It’s similar to a financial power of attorney except that your agent’s authority is limited to making medical and healthcare decisions on your behalf rather than financial decisions.

You can also specify in your healthcare documents any instructions that your agent needs to follow. For example, you may be against blood transfusions for religious reasons and you may wish to stipulate that your agent cannot agree to such transfusions. In almost all instances, your agent and attending physician will be obliged to comply with your instructions.

A health care power of attorney can be really beneficial if you are unable to communicate your healthcare wishes during any period of incapacity. In that case, your agent will be able to step in and make the decision for you. Of course, as with financial powers of attorney, choose an agent you trust and who will respect your wishes should the need arise.

3. Living Will (Advance Health Care Directive)

A living will, also known as an advance health care directive, allows you to specify the end-of-life treatments you want or don’t want to receive if you become terminally ill or permanently unconscious and unable to communicate your wishes. Your physicians will be obliged to follow the instructions set out in your living will in administering your medical treatment.

You can also appoint an agent with responsibility for ensuring compliance with your wishes and communicating with physicians on your behalf.

The situations in which living wills apply are different to those in which health care powers of attorney apply. Living wills only apply where there is no reasonable prospect of the patient recovering from the disease, illness or condition that has resulted in their inability to communicate their wishes and where death is the likely end result. So, for example, if you were merely unconscious because you were sedated for an operation, the provisions of your living will would not apply.

Without a living will, your family would have to make the difficult decision as to whether to continue to apply every treatment possible to keep you alive (irrespective of the cost, your age and your overall health) or allow you pass peacefully. By having a living will, you remove this burden from them by setting out your wishes in advance.

4. Last Will And Testament

A last will and testament is one of the best estate planning documents you can make. It allows you to determine the distribution of your property, real and personal, after your death. It sets out who will receive your assets after you die and how your liabilities will be discharged. If you don’t have a will, state law will determine how your assets are divided up between your family and your loved ones (especially unmarried or unregistered partners) may end up with nothing.

You can also appoint an executor who will be charged with the responsibility of winding up your estate after you die, arranging for the payment of your debts and the distribution of your assets. If you don’t appoint an executor, a court will appoint one – and this may not be someone that you would have wanted going through your personal affairs.

More importantly, you will be able to nominate a guardian to take care of any minor children of yours after your death. You will also be able to make provision for your children in your will by creating a trust or custodianship for them. Again, if you fail to make the appointment under your will, a court will appoint a guardian and it may not be someone that you wanted raising your children.

5. Revocable Living Trust

A revocable living trust is one of the most spoken about and misunderstood estate planning documents. It is used to create a trust between you as grantor (the person who transfers the assets to the trust) and you as trustee (the person who manages the trust assets). As you are both grantor and trustee of the trust, you will be able to enjoy and control the trust assets after you have transferred the assets to the trust – in much the same way as you did before the transfer. Better still, you can always transfer the assets back in to your own personal name if you so desire.

The benefit of a living trust is that because the trust assets will be in the name of your trust at the time of your death, rather than in your personal name, there will be no need for those assets to go through probate. As such, the person named as successor trustee (which is a little like a personal representative or executor) in your living trust agreement will be able to quickly transfer the trust assets to the beneficiaries named in the trust document after your death.

Another advantage is that if you become incapacitated at any time, your successor trustee will be able to step in and take over management of the trust assets – without the need to go to court. He can also use the trust assets to make provision for your medical care or to provide for any of your named beneficiaries.

Properly drafted, a living trust is a fantastic estate planning device with many benefits.

How Can EstateBee Help You? 

For more information on any of these estate planning documents, read some of the other articles in the Learning Center.

You can also check out our book Estate Planning Essentials. It introduces you to estate planning and shows you how you can make an effective estate plan quickly and easily without the need for a lawyer. You’ll learn about estate planning documents such as wills, trusts, powers of attorney, medical directives, probate avoidance methods and more. To help you get a fuller understanding, particular attention is paid throughout to beneficiaries, children, disinheritance, incapacity, estate taxes and inheritance taxes. If you want to prepare an estate plan, this book is for you.

Alternatively, check out EstateBee’s online estate planning software that allows you to make an online last will and testament, an online living will, an online living trust and an online power of attorney without the cost or need to engage a lawyer. Without a doubt, our estate planning software is one of the most sophisticated pieces of online estate planning software on the market and has been a market leader for over 20 years.

EstateBee’s software is state specific. So, for example, when you are presented with options for property management for minor beneficiaries, various elements of your state’s laws have been incorporated in to those options – such as whether your state allows UTMA custodianships or not, the age of termination of such custodianships, etc. The same applies in relation to the execution of your will, for example. In the case of Vermont, for example, where three witnesses are required, the software adds the relevant number of witnesses to your document. And the list goes on…everything is state specific and bespoke to your situation whether you are married, in a registered partnership and whether you have children or not.

If you have any questions about our products or services, please contact our  customer service team, who would be delighted to assist you.

Many people think estate planning is for the wealthy or simply believe that there is no need for them to have an estate plan – after all, they don’t have much anyway. The reality is that anyone who has reached the age of majority in their state, has any assets which are important to them, or who has children should make an estate plan. A decent estate plan will include, as a minimum, a last will and testament, a durable general power of attorney and a healthcare power of attorney and living will.

The fact is, whether your estate is large or small, there are many compelling reasons why everyone (with very few exceptions) should take the time to organize and plan their estate. For example, developing and implementing a good estate plan will ensure that:

• your assets will be managed during any period in which you are incapacitated (this is accomplished using a durable power of attorney);

• someone you know and trust will be able to make medical decisions in accordance with your specific instructions and wishes should you become incapacitated (this is accomplished using a healthcare power of attorney and a living will);

• your assets will be disposed of as you would have wanted following your death and you avoid intestacy – which is where the courts decide who inherits your assets based on state laws (this is done using a last will and testament);

• your family and friends will not have to wait months or even years to receive their inheritance following your death (this is done using estate planning techniques such as pay-of-death account, transfer-on-death securities, living trusts, insurance policies, tenancy and common and other similar methods);

• your children will be properly looked after by a guardian of your choosing and not one appointed by a court (this can be achieved using a last will and testament); and

• much more.

When it comes to estate planning, one thing is certain. If you fail to plan ahead, a judge will make all of the above decisions for you. In making these decisions, the judge will look your state’s law and the predefined estate plan that applies for everyone who fails to plan for the distribution of their estate themselves. In essence, a court will appoint someone to make medical decisions on your behalf, dictate who receives your assets based on specific rules of inheritance (known as the rules of intestacy), appoint someone to look after your children and much more. What is worse, neither your wishes nor those of your family can override the decision of the court.

From the above, you can see that one of the most compelling reasons to prepare an estate plan sooner rather than later is control. If you have a proper estate plan in place then you, and not a court, can determine how your affairs are dealt with.

If you want to put that estate plan in place, EstateBee can help you. We provide all of the self-help documents, kits and books necessary to enable you to put your estate plan in place. We are experts in estate planning and have been in existence since 2000 – so we know what we are doing and we know how to help you. On top of that, all our documents have been prepared by lawyers and are written in easy to understand language.

How Can We Help You?

For more information on estate planning, read some of the other articles on this website.

You can also check out our book Estate Planning Essentials. It introduces you to estate planning and shows you how you can make an effective estate plan quickly and easily without the need for a lawyer. You’ll learn about estate planning devices such as wills, trusts, powers of attorney, medical directives, probate avoidance methods and more. To help you get a fuller understanding, particular attention is paid throughout to beneficiaries, children, disinheritance, incapacity, estate taxes and inheritance taxes. If you want to prepare an estate plan, this book is for you.

If you have any questions about our products or services, please contact our  customer service team, who would be delighted to assist you.