What are you organizing?

Begin with the documents that determine who can act, who can speak for you, and what happens when you die.

• Wills and trustsWhat a will decides, what it cannot touch, what makes one valid where you live, and whether you need a trust.
• Beneficiary designationsThe forms that override your will, and the afternoon it takes to check them.
• Account inventoryA record of where the money, the policies and the access actually are — the one document that shortens everything else.

What each one actually does, which of the things you own it reaches, and how to tell a document that will work from one that only looks official.

• What controls this assetNot what your documents say. What each thing you own is actually pointed at.
• Online will or a lawyerTwo states print a free will form and, beside it, the list of situations in which you should not use one. That list is the answer, and you can check yourself against it in ten minutes.
• Creating and funding a trustA trust can be valid with nothing in it. That is the whole problem: an unfunded trust generally does not control assets that were never transferred into it.
• The emergency sheetOne page a paramedic can read in ten seconds. What goes on it, and the four things that should not.

A will is not the only instruction on your property, and it loses to most of the others. What the deed, the beneficiary form and the title say happens first.

• How your home passesFour ways a house can pass, and the one people most often assume — the will — is the slowest of them.
• Property in another stateLand is governed where it sits, so a second home can mean a second proceeding — and the decision that avoids it is made years earlier.
• Vehicle beneficiaryWhere a state offers it, naming a beneficiary on the title takes minutes and can move the car without probate. Not every state provides one.
• Life insuranceWhat the policy really pays, the money you can draw while alive, and the rights that expire unused.

Children, an adult who needs support, a business somebody works in, an animal nobody has agreed to take.

• People who depend on youDependence is not a legal status. What to put in place so the people who rely on you are not left without money or authority.
• Naming a guardianNaming somebody to raise your children is not the same as appointing them — and it is two jobs, not one.
• Business successionWhat happens to your share of the business if you die tomorrow is already decided — by a statute, unless you decided it yourself.
• PetsA line in a will is a wish. A trust for the care of an animal is enforceable — and over-funding it is the mistake that gets it cut down.

Marrying rewrites property, debt and inheritance rights on its own. What an agreement before or after it can and cannot change.

• PrenupsMarriage rewrites property, debt and inheritance rights on its own. A prenup is how a couple decides some of that themselves instead.
• Do I need a prenup?The useful question is not whether you have enough money. It is whether your state's default rules are the ones you would have picked.
• Prenups and your estate planA second marriage, two sets of children, and one estate. Remarrying does not update a plan: an agreement records what you decided, but a deed, a beneficiary form and a plan document are what actually move the money.
• Marriage and debtMarrying somebody does not generally make their debts yours. What changes is which pot of money a creditor is allowed to reach.
• Postnuptial agreementsAlready married is not too late. But an agreement made during a marriage is not simply a prenup signed later, and the difference is the whole question.

What it means to move a substantial sum toward a child's home, a business or a life, and what it does to everybody else's share.

• Helping a child buy a homeMoving the money is the easy half. Deciding what it was — a gift, a loan, a share of the house — is the half that decides the next twenty years.
• Accepting family help to buy a homeSay yes to the money and you have also said yes to something. Six questions settle what, and they are much easier to ask before the offer becomes a wire transfer.
• Helping one child moreThe argument is rarely about the amount. It is about finding out late, and about nobody being able to say what was intended.

A plan goes out of date quietly. What to revisit and when, and two decisions that no document in an ordinary estate plan captures.

• Keeping it currentA plan is not finished when it is signed. What actually goes wrong is a document that was right in 2014 — and the life event that quietly changed the answer.
• Organ donationWhere a state provides for it, registering is a legally effective gift rather than a preference. What that means, and how to record it where you live.
• Digital legacyWhy knowing the password is not permission, the account setting that outranks your will, and a plan somebody can actually maintain.