The estate planning questionnaire: what to gather before we meet

Before your first meeting we send a confidential estate planning questionnaire. It is not a test, and it is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the same set of facts an attorney has to know before she can tell you what your plan should actually say, and every answer you bring is a question we do not have to spend your consultation reconstructing.

The 30-minute phone consultation is free, and you do not need the questionnaire finished to have it. This page walks through everything the form asks, in the order it asks, so you can gather at your own pace.

About you

• Your full legal name, plus any prior legal names and any other names you have used. Deeds and old accounts often carry a name you no longer use.
• Date and place of birth, and your Social Security number.
• Whether you are a United States citizen, and whether you are a Florida resident.
• Your permanent address, including the county, and whether you claim the Florida homestead exemption on it.
• Home, work and cell numbers, your occupation and your employer.
• Your marital status, and whether you have ever been divorced or widowed.

Your family

• If you are married: the date and place of the marriage, your spouse's full legal name and maiden name, and your spouse's date of birth.
• Whether you signed a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement. If so, bring a signed copy with any later changes.
• Whether you ever lived in Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington or Wisconsin while married, and whether you bought property there. Florida has a statute that carries community property rights forward at death, which is why this question is on the form.
• Each child's full legal name, date of birth, current address, phone number and number of children of their own. The form asks you not to list a stepchild or foster child here; tell us about them separately, because they are usually part of the plan.
• Whether any child has died before you, and whether that child had children.

What you already have

• A will or a revocable living trust.
• A designation of health care surrogate.
• A durable power of attorney.
• A living will.
• Any wishes about organ donation, including whether there are organs or purposes you want to limit.
• Any wishes about the disposition of your remains, such as cremation or burial at a particular cemetery.

The people you choose

For each role the form asks for a full legal name, current address, county and relationship to you, and it asks for an alternate. The alternate is not a formality. It is the name that saves your family a court hearing on the day the first choice cannot serve.

• Personal representative and alternate. Florida's term for an executor. Married people often name a spouse. A personal representative who is not related to you, or married to someone related to you, must be a Florida resident.
• Whether the personal representative posts a bond. Some judges honor a waiver in the will; others require a bond, which the estate pays for.
• Trustee and alternate, if you are considering a trust for a spouse, child, grandchild, parent, another person or a charity. You may name co-trustees or a bank or trust company. The form also asks whether the trustee posts a bond, which the trust pays for.
• Guardian and alternate for minor children, named in your will to care for your children and manage their property until they turn 18 if both parents die. You may name joint guardians, or split the role into a guardian of the person and a guardian of the property when the right person for your children is not the right person for their money.

Who receives what

• Specific gifts. Any particular item or sum you want a particular person to receive: the car, the ring, the tools, an amount of money. For each, the beneficiary's name, address and relationship to you. If there are many items, Florida lets you sign a separate handwritten or signed list you can change later without redoing your will.
• Backups for the specific gifts. Who receives that share if the beneficiary does not survive you, such as that person's children.
• The residue. After expenses, debts, taxes and the specific gifts, whatever remains. Name each beneficiary with their address, relationship and the percentage or amount, and say who takes a share if a residuary beneficiary does not survive you.
• Trust terms you care about. If you are thinking about a trust, write down what matters to you: an age at which a child receives outright, money held for education, a beneficiary whose benefits could be at risk, a child you want protected from a divorce.
• Anything else about your intentions. The form leaves space on purpose. Use it.

Your health care and incapacity decisions

These are the documents that work while you are living, and for most families they matter more day to day than the will ever will.

• Agent under a durable power of attorney, and an alternate. The person who can act on your assets for your benefit. Florida requires certain powers to be initialed one by one, so plan to go through that list with us rather than on your own.
• Health care surrogate and alternate, with their phone numbers. The person who receives your medical information, consents to treatment and manages your care when you cannot.
• Your living will answers. Florida's form asks whether you would want dying prolonged by artificial means in three defined situations: a terminal condition, an end-stage condition, and a persistent vegetative state. Read the definitions, answer each one separately, and talk it through with the people you are naming.

What you own and what you owe

Estimates are fine. What we need is the shape of the estate and, just as important, how each thing is titled. If completing the summary feels like too much, a current financial statement can stand in for the whole section.

• For each asset, the value held by you alone, jointly with your spouse, and jointly with anyone else. Do not subtract the mortgage or the debt; those come next.
• Your homestead and any other real property, with the address of each.
• Bank accounts, certificates of deposit and money market funds. Stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
• Any business you own an interest in, as a sole proprietor, partner, shareholder or member.
• Money owed to you, such as a mortgage note or promissory note.
• The cash value, not the death benefit, of life insurance you own.
• Household furniture and appliances, motor vehicles, and jewelry, art, antiques and collections.
• Retirement accounts, annuities, and any trust in which you are a beneficiary.
• Liabilities: mortgages on the homestead and on other property, personal and unsecured debts, and any other significant debts or judgments.
• Copies of the supporting documents for anything payable on death to a named beneficiary.

Gifts, life insurance and your other advisors

• Whether you have ever made large gifts to any one person in a single year, and whether you have ever filed a federal gift tax return, IRS Form 709. The form's own dollar threshold was written some years ago and the federal reporting figure has changed since, so list any sizable gift you remember and we will sort out what actually had to be reported.
• For each life insurance policy on your life: the death benefit, the type of policy, the beneficiary, the owner and the company.
• Name, address and phone number for your accountant, investment broker, insurance agent, financial planner and banker. With your written permission, we coordinate with them so your plan and your accounts finally agree with each other.
• Who referred you to us, so we can thank them.

What to bring to the meeting

• Your identification, and your spouse's.
• Your most recent will and any codicil.
• All divorce decrees and settlement agreements.
• Any buy-sell agreement you have signed.
• Any prenuptial or postnuptial agreement you have signed.
• Any trust created by you or for you.
• Deeds and tax receipts for any real property you own.

When you are ready

Bring the folder, bring the questionnaire as far as you got, and bring the questions you have been carrying around. The consultation is 30 minutes on the phone, at no charge, in English or in Spanish. You will leave it knowing what your plan needs, what it will cost, and what happens next.