Assembling Your Estate Plan: Documents, Beneficiaries, and Family Conversations

An estate plan is most effective when the documents, beneficiary designations, and family conversations all align. This hands-on course walks you through assembling that aligned plan with templates. By the end of this course you will have a written summary of decisions, a will draft, a trust decision memo, a beneficiary alignment list, an estate planning binder, and a family communication plan for your executor and heirs. What you will learn: - How to inventory assets, debts, and beneficiaries as the basis for the plan - How to choose executors, trustees, and guardians for minors - How to decide between a simple will and a will plus a revocable trust - How to align beneficiary designations across retirement accounts, life insurance, and transfer-on-death registrations - How to handle digital assets, pets, and sentimental items that wills often miss - How to assemble a binder including documents, account inventories, and contacts - How to communicate your plan to your executor, spouse, and heirs without losing privacy The course is structured as a workbook. Each module presents one set of decisions, provides templates, walks through a filled example, and guides you to complete your own version. This course is written for adults who want to act on estate planning rather than continue intending to. By the end you will have replaced unease with a complete binder of decisions and documents, ready for signing with an attorney where appropriate, and the people who will eventually act on the plan will know enough to do so without confusion.