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Estate Planning Checklist for Adult Children

Elderly man with daughter

You’re not the parent in this relationship.

That’s the line worth remembering before you start any conversation about your aging parent’s estate plan. The instinct, especially for adult children who run things in their own lives, is to step in and “get this organized.” The instinct is right. The execution is where most adult children get this wrong.

Estate planning isn’t a project you do for your parent. It’s a conversation you help facilitate, a checklist you help complete, and a binder you help maintain — with your parent’s authority, on your parent’s timeline, with your parent’s signature on every document. The version where you take over fast is the version that ends with a parent who hides the will from you and a sibling who challenges everything you touched.

This post is the checklist version. Nine documents every family should have in place before a crisis. The order to tackle them in. Where to keep them. Who needs to know they exist. And the conversation framework that keeps your parent in charge of their own life while you help organize the scaffolding underneath it.

If you haven’t read it, the foundational read on the dynamic: How to Respect Aging Parents’ Independence While Offering Help.

The framing before the checklist.

Three things to say out loud, to your parent, before you start gathering documents:

  • “Mom, I want to help make sure your wishes are clear and protected. I’m not trying to take anything over.”
  • “This is yours. I’m helping you organize it. You decide what goes where, what stays private, and who gets copies.”
  • “If anything doesn’t feel right, tell me, and we slow down.”

The framing matters more than the documents. A parent who feels respected through the process ends up with a complete plan. A parent who feels managed ends up with a partial plan and a lot of friction.

The nine documents.

The list below is the working set most adult children should help their parent organize. Some of these your parent may already have. Some may need to be drafted from scratch. Some may need updating because the documents are 15 or 20 years old and don’t reflect current wishes or current law.

1. Last Will and Testament. The document that directs how your parent’s assets are distributed at death and names an executor (the person who manages the estate through probate). Most adult children don’t realize a will doesn’t avoid probate — it just gives instructions for it. If your parent has assets that should bypass probate, those need to be handled through trusts or beneficiary designations (covered below).

2. Revocable Living Trust (if applicable). For families with meaningful assets — typically homes plus retirement accounts plus investment accounts — a Revocable Living Trust (RLT) can avoid probate, simplify asset transfer at death, and provide privacy that wills don’t. Not every family needs one. An elder law attorney is the right professional to advise on whether the additional cost and complexity are worth it for your parent’s specific situation. See Roles of Elder Law Attorneys in Caregiving.

3. Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA) for Finances. Authorizes a designated person to manage your parent’s financial affairs if they become unable to do so themselves. “Durable” means it remains valid through incapacity. Without a DPOA in place, the family may face guardianship proceedings to gain authority over your parent’s finances — heavy, expensive, public, and often avoidable. The DPOA is the single most important document in caregiving terms.

4. Health Care Power of Attorney (HCPOA). Sometimes called a healthcare proxy or healthcare surrogate. Authorizes a designated person to make medical decisions if your parent can’t. Pair with the next item.

5. Living Will / Advance Directive. Documents your parent’s wishes about life-sustaining treatment, resuscitation, intubation, and other end-of-life care decisions. Format and name varies by state. The HCPOA names a person; the living will provides the wishes that person should follow. Both are needed. See Living Wills: A Guide for Caregivers for the deeper read.

6. HIPAA Release. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) restricts who can receive your parent’s medical information. Without a signed HIPAA release listing the family members authorized to receive information, hospital staff and doctors are legally prevented from sharing it — even with the adult child standing in the hallway. Many hospitals have their own HIPAA forms; have your parent sign one for each provider, and keep a copy in the binder.

7. Beneficiary designations (current and verified). This is the document category most adult children skip — and the one that most often produces post-death disputes. Every retirement account, life insurance policy, annuity, and Transfer-on-Death (TOD) or Payable-on-Death (POD) account passes outside the will, directly to whoever is named as beneficiary. Beneficiary designations override what the will says. A 30-year-old IRA that still names a long-divorced spouse will pay that spouse, regardless of what the current will instructs. Walk through every account with your parent. Make sure designations match current intent.

8. Property and asset records. Deed for the primary residence (and any other real estate). Vehicle titles. Brokerage and bank account statements (most recent month). Retirement account statements. Life insurance policies (the actual policies, not just the bills). Safe deposit box location and contents. Digital asset access (passwords, two-factor backup codes). Most parents have these scattered across decades and locations. Centralization is the highest-value gift you can give the future executor.

9. Final wishes documents. Letter of instructions for personal effects. Funeral and burial preferences (or written confirmation of cremation arrangements). Obituary instructions, if your parent has preferences. Lists of people to notify. Sometimes called a “letter to family.” Not legally binding, but emotionally invaluable when the moment comes.

The order to tackle them in.

If your parent has none of these in place, the order that minimizes risk and maximizes leverage:

  • First — DPOA, HCPOA, Living Will, HIPAA release. These are the documents that protect your parent if capacity declines. Get these in place before any cognitive concerns surface. Once capacity is in question, the documents are harder (sometimes impossible) to execute properly.
  • Second — beneficiary designations and POD/TOD designations. Quick wins. Easy to update through the financial institution. Massively reduces post-death dispute risk.
  • Third — will and trust (if applicable). These take more time and usually involve an elder law attorney. Worth doing well rather than fast.
  • Fourth — final wishes and asset centralization. Lower-stakes documents that benefit the future executor. Can be assembled gradually.

If your parent already has some of the above, start with the gaps and the documents most overdue for review. A 25-year-old will that names an executor who has since passed away is worse than no will, in some respects.

Where to keep them.

A working system that adult children consistently report works:

  • A physical binder in a known location your parent and the designated executor both know. Originals of all signed documents.
  • A digital backup of scans, in a password-protected folder accessible to the executor.
  • Copies with the elder law attorney if engaged.
  • Copies with the named DPOA, HCPOA, and executor so they have the authority documents in their own hands.
  • A safe deposit box is fine for some assets but not for the original will in many states — accessing a safe deposit box at death often requires probate to open it, which defeats the purpose.

The goal isn’t a perfect filing system. The goal is that the executor and the designated POAs can find every document within an hour, on the day they need it.

Who needs to know.

A short conversation worth having while everyone is healthy:

  • The executor needs to know they’re named, where the will is, and where the asset records are.
  • The DPOA needs to know they’re named, where the document is, and what your parent’s wishes are about financial decisions.
  • The HCPOA needs to know they’re named, where the document is, and what your parent’s wishes are about end-of-life care.
  • The siblings or other beneficiaries need to know, in broad terms, that a plan exists and where the documents are kept. They do not need to see the documents themselves while the parent is alive unless the parent chooses to share them.

The version where the parent dies and one sibling pulls out the will to read it for the first time — to the surprise of the rest of the family — is the version that produces inheritance fights. The version where everyone knew, in broad terms, that the documents existed and had been signed and the wishes were set, produces fewer disputes. See Why Siblings Fight Over Inheritance and How to Avoid It for the family-dynamics layer of this.

When to update.

Documents should be reviewed at minimum every five years, and immediately after:

  • A marriage or divorce in the family
  • A death of a named executor, POA, or beneficiary
  • Significant changes in assets (major sale, inheritance, business sale)
  • A move to a different state (estate planning rules vary)
  • Significant changes in family relationships (estrangement, reconciliation, adult adoption)
  • Changes in tax law that affect your parent’s estate

If it’s been more than ten years since the documents were last touched, a review with an elder law attorney is overdue, regardless of whether anything else has changed.

“You’re not the parent in this relationship. You’re the coordinator. The documents are your parent’s. Your job is to help organize the scaffolding underneath them — with their authority, on their timeline, with their signature on every page.”

FROM TWO PARENTS, TWO STARTING POINTS:

When my mom’s last husband passed, she handed me everything. Account statements, the will, life insurance policies, the safe deposit box keys, passwords I didn’t know existed. She wanted me to take it all. The conversation about “respecting her independence” wasn’t really a conversation — she was actively asking me to step in.

That made the document organization side easy. The hard part wasn’t getting access. The hard part was processing the volume of decades of paperwork, identifying what was current, what was outdated, what mattered, and what didn’t. Even with full access and a willing parent, organizing a lifetime of estate-related paperwork is more work than most adult children expect.

My dad was the opposite. He didn’t want my sister or I touching his finances or his legal documents for years. For most of that stretch, we respected what he didn’t want us touching. I asked, periodically, if he wanted help organizing anything. He’d say no, and I’d let it sit.

Eventually — well after we’d have liked, but at the moment he was ready — he started letting us look at things alongside him. Not all of it. The pieces he was comfortable sharing. What I learned in that stretch is that respect is the helping. Every time we didn’t push him on it, every time we let him say no, we were investing in a future moment where he might say yes.

The lesson: the estate planning checklist is the easy part. The relationship that lets the checklist actually get filled out is the hard part. Adult children who push too fast end up with parents who hide things. Adult children who never push end up with crises they could have prevented. The middle path — ask, accept the answer, ask again later, build trust over time — is harder than both.

Honor is in the name of our company for a reason: ElderHonor. Honoring our parents includes preparing for the moment when we’ll need to act on their behalf — without taking over the part of their lives they’re still running. The checklist above is the structure. The conversation around it is the relationship that makes the structure possible.

What can go wrong if you skip this.

A few of the patterns I’ve seen in families that didn’t have these documents in place:

  • The hospital admission with no HCPOA on file. The family scrambles, the hospital follows default state hierarchy (which may not match the parent’s wishes), and decisions get made by the wrong person.
  • The financial decline with no DPOA. Bills go unpaid, accounts get frozen, the family files for guardianship — a year-long, expensive court process.
  • The beneficiary designation that nobody reviewed. A 30-year-old retirement account pays out to a long-divorced spouse, despite the will saying otherwise. The current spouse and adult children sue. No will revisions can fix it post-death.
  • The safe deposit box nobody could open. Original will inside, executor can’t access it without probate, probate can’t proceed without the will. Months of legal limbo.
  • The fragmented binder. Some documents in one location, some in another, some on a thumb drive nobody can find. The executor spends six months reconstructing what should have been organized in a weekend.

None of those are dramatic. All of them are common. The checklist above is preventive medicine for almost all of them.

Where to start today.

If your parent has none of these documents in place:

  1. Schedule a consultation with an elder law attorney. (Find one via NAELA.) Initial consultations are often free or low-cost.
  2. Have the framing conversation with your parent. Not the document conversation — the “I want to help make sure your wishes are clear” conversation. Get their buy-in before any paperwork.
  3. Start with the four protection documents — DPOA, HCPOA, Living Will, HIPAA release. Get these signed within 30 days.
  4. Move to the estate plan package — will and (if applicable) trust. Within 60–90 days.
  5. Centralize records — the binder, the digital backup, the executor’s copy. Ongoing project.

If your parent has some documents but they’re old or scattered:

  1. Pull what exists into one place. Even if you don’t update them yet.
  2. Schedule the elder law attorney review to identify what needs refreshing.
  3. Update the most overdue documents first.

The goal isn’t perfection on day one. The goal is that within 90 days, your family has the protection documents in place, the asset records centralized, and a plan for the harder updates over the next year. That’s enough to handle almost anything that comes.

You’ve got this.

The toolkit’s Documents and Roadmap modules walk through this checklist in the order it’s designed to be tackled, with the conversation scripts, document-tracking templates, and review cadence that keeps the plan current as your parent’s life changes.

See the toolkit →

Some additional articles that might help:

Some additional notes:

Document names and requirements vary by state. The “Living Will / Advance Directive” naming, witness/notary requirements, and specific protections vary; some states use “Health Care Directive” or “Medical Directive” instead. Verify state-specific requirements before relying on anything.

The “safe deposit box / will access” issue is real but state-specific. Some states have streamlined access for the named executor. Check your state.

The HIPAA release form requirements (signed by patient, must list authorized recipients, often provider-specific) are federal but specific provider forms vary. Hospitals and physician offices typically have their own.

Revocable Living Trust (RLT) is a national framework but state-level rules around funding, trustee responsibilities, and creditor protection vary. Don’t quote as universal guidance, verify your State’s requirements before signing any documents.

The Transfer-on-Death (TOD) and Payable-on-Death (POD) account designations are widely available but not in every state for every account type. Some states don’t allow TOD on real estate; check your state before making any decisions.

The “review every 5 years” recommendation is a rule of thumb, not a regulatory requirement. Determine frequently that works for you and your family.

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