How to Prepare to Pass on Your Possessions

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp is joined by Motley Fool employee Stephanie Marini to discuss the most unpleasant area of financial planning: estate planning. Topics covered include:

• When to seek an attorney in your state for estate planning.
• How much estate planning you can do on your own.
• What should be included in your will
• When to consider a trust.
• Creating your "financial vault."

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A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Aug. 29, 2026.

Robert Brokamp: Prepare to pass on your possessions because it's eventually going to happen. That's right. We're talking estate planning on this Saturday Personal Finance edition of the Motley Pool Hidden Jems Investing podcast. I'm Robert Brokamp, and welcome to the next installment of our 2026 Financial Planning Challenge. A few days early. Usually, we publish each episode of our Year Well Planned series on the first Saturday of the month, but we figured this Saturday was close enough. Today, we're going to cover perhaps the most unpleasant aspect of financial planning: estate planning. But it's necessary because while it's nearly impossible to predict the future, when it comes to most aspects of personal finance, there's one thing we can guarantee, and it's that you, me, and everyone we know will one day pass away, leaving assets and stuff behind to be divvied up. Here to join me to talk about what you should do to ensure that all your assets go to who you want as quickly and efficiently as possible is my Foolish colleague, certified financial planner Stephanie Marini. Welcome back, Stephanie.

Stephanie Marini: Thanks so much for having me. I know this may be weird to admit, but I actually really like this topic, so I'm excited to go through it.

Robert Brokamp: Okay, you're weird, oh, actually just kidding. I like to talk about this topic, too, because estate planning is really the one aspect of financial planning that everyone needs, yet it's the one that's among the most neglected. According to the Pew Research Center, less than a third of adults have a will, which just one aspect of estate planning. Let's start with the fundamentals. What's your definition of estate planning and what it entails?

Stephanie Marini: Estate planning, to me, is making sure that your wishes are clearly defined so that your assets can be transferred the way you want. More importantly, though, estate planning is a way to take the stress off of your loved ones to help make the decisions for them ahead of time.

Robert Brokamp: Yeah, I love that part because estate planning isn't just a collection of documents; it's really a gift to your family. A thorough estate plan is going to save them time, money, hassle, maybe having to hire a lawyer, and really potential family strife because, without an estate plan, what fills the void, sometimes fights, disagreements, resentments, so it's important to do all that now so that when you are gone, your family has mostly pleasant memories and not family fights. In this episode, we're going to cover some of the estate planning essentials at a pretty high level and then dig deeper into creating a document that will provide a roadmap to follow if something happens to you.

First, I'm going to start with the standard device that you really should see an experienced estate planning attorney in your state to actually do your plan, because a lot of estate planning laws are very specific to each state. That said, I'm often a little reluctant to say that because then people think, well, I can't do any estate planning until I get an attorney. That's actually not true. You can get an awful lot done today, right after you're done listening to this episode without a lawyer's help. Stephanie, tell us about how beneficiary designations, as well as payable on death and transfer on death designations, can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to estate planning.

Stephanie Marini: I think you hit the nail on the head. Most people, I would imagine, avoid estate planning because they think it's this big thing. They have to hire a lawyer, get all of the documents, like taxes, but on steroids. But in reality, there's a lot that an individual can handle that would help further the process along. For most account types, 401Ks, IRAs, brokerage accounts, even down to checking and savings account, high-yield account, high-yield savings accounts, there is a way to designate a beneficiary directly. Usually, that happens during account opening, but it can be modified at any time, and so that you, the account owner, can directly name the person and percentage that your account will go to upon death. This is huge because these designations allow the account to avoid probate and go directly to the individual based on your wishes. Often, there's even a way to designate a secondary beneficiary. As an example, for my individual brokerage account, I have my husband listed as the primary beneficiary at 100%, but then my two kids are listed as secondary beneficiaries at 50% each. I think it's a great place to start because it's a step that usually takes less than 15 minutes. Oftentimes, you can do it through your online portal, and it’s a low-lift, high-reward step in the estate planning process.

Robert Brokamp: Life insurance policies to that, as well, something that you put the beneficiary designation on. When you think of the accounts and assets that you own, this pretty much takes care of most of the net worth for a lot of Americans. You mentioned probate, which is the legal process that takes place after someone dies. It involves all steps, proving in court that a will is valid, identifying inventorying the person's property, maybe having an appraise, and then distributing the property. Depending on the state, this can be time-consuming. It can be costly. In most situations, you really want to do all you can to bypass probate, and these beneficiary POD, TOD designations can do that. In some states, property like a house or a car could have one of these designations. It's usually done on the deed or the title, so find out what's possible in your estate. Now, we just mentioned wills, which are often considered the foundation of an estate plan. What are some of the most compelling reasons to get or update your will?

Stephanie Marini: Bear with me because this is a stretch, but I've heard an argument made about prenups that I think really applies in this situation, too. Everybody already has a will. It's either you have drawn one up or the state has drawn one up for you because like you mentioned, most of estate planning is handled at the state level with individual state laws, and they determine how assets are passed down. Do you know what your state's laws are? Are you happy with them? I'm going to be honest. I didn't have a will until I had kids. I probably should have had one sooner, but as soon as kids were involved, I knew it needed to get done. But the will is a legal document that provides direction for executing all of your wishes. It should encompass things like accounts, physical assets, house, but it also includes things like guardian for your children and allows you the power to name an executor for the person who is going to be the one to execute the will and your wishes. I do think that everyone should have a will written out. We can touch a little bit more on that later.

But even as single in my early 20s, my parents wouldn't have known where my accounts were or who my health insurance provider was. I lived on my own. It would have been a major headache for them if something had happened to me. Even after you get an initial will setup, I'd say things like major life events, age milestones should really be those pillars for when to get a will updated, check in to see if things have changed. If you're looking at those life milestones, new kids, blended families, retirement, those are all great life milestones. Then from an age front, I like 10-year increments, 40, 50, 60, 72, specifically before RMDs start. Not that all of these would involve a full will rewrite, but it's a good touchpoint: Does everything still make sense? Is everything still the same? Do we need to make adjustments?

Robert Brokamp: Just from a time-based perspective, I think every three to five years, even if you haven't had a major life event, it's a good idea to look at your estate plan and see if it needs updating. My wife and I actually are in the process of doing that ourselves. You touched on the personal property part, we all have a lot of stuff, furniture, clothes, jewelry, art collectables, on and on. Closets are full, garages are full. This stuff may not seem as important as who gets your IRA or 401K, but attorneys will tell you that some of the biggest family fights are over who gets stuff like a treasured family heirloom or some other item with sentimental value. You can direct in your will who gets this stuff. It could be directly in the will. Sometimes it's in an accompanying document, usually known as the personal property memorandum. Part of this could be asking the people who you're going to leave stuff to like your kids. Like, what of our items do you want? If there's a situation where, like, two or three kids want the same item, you work that out now. Put it in your will so there's not a fight after you're gone.

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Robert Brokamp: Let's move on to one of the more complicated questions when it comes to estate planning, and that is whether someone needs a trust. Stephanie, what do you see as the most compelling reasons to get a trust?

Stephanie Marini: I'm going to say complexity. I know that that's a really generic answer when it comes to a complicated question. But ultimately, that one needs to be decided with an attorney in your specific state with your specific circumstances. But the families that have additional complexities are going to need those extra protections in place. Maybe they're extra instructions for their loved ones. We're talking businesses that are going to be handed down. We're talking about maybe blended families or contentious families. Something that needs a little bit more than Asset 1 goes to Kid 2. It could be many different reasons, but ultimately, if it's something more challenging or difficult than that, I would get an attorney involved.

Robert Brokamp: Yeah, and I'll just point out that if you're getting a trust that is going to increase the cost of your estate plan, that's why it's somewhat debatable, because you generally don't want to pay for a trust if you don't need it. But in many situations, it is the absolute right thing to have.

A couple of other benefits to highlight is that assets held in trust do bypass probate, so that's a big benefit. They're definitely worth considering if your heirs perhaps shouldn't inherit all their money all at once. Maybe they have special needs, and they can't handle the money, or the money having it in trust protects them so that they can get some government benefits. Maybe your heirs have addiction challenges, or maybe they just don’t have good financial habits, or maybe they’re married to someone who doesn’t have good financial habits. A trust is a way to have some control beyond the grave, as they say, and dictate how the money is managed and how it will be distributed. Those are the estate planning essentials. There's a lot more to talk about with all these documents, but again, you really should see a qualified attorney for doing that.

But now let's move on to an important document that should be a part of an estate plan, but I think it's often neglected. In fact, even many attorneys don't bring this up. Stephanie, tell us about the financial vault.

Stephanie Marini: Circling back to things that we have control over without going through an attorney, I'm going to be honest. It doesn't have legal standing, but what I'm calling a financial vault is an inventory of all things financed in one spot. Not just account types, but it's something that you'd want immediately accessible, and that you'd want your executor to have access to. We're talking about things like not just having the account listed out, but where it is, what is a login for it, and what are some first steps that needs to be taken. It's that resource that your loved ones can use as that map during an already emotional time for them.

Robert Brokamp: I'll just highlight that it could also be helpful, not only in death, but if you ever become incapacitated. You're in an accident, you're in a coma, something like that, and someone has to take over your finances while you're incapacitated. All this information will help them manage your finances while you recover. I'll just say, the process of doing this is a great way to go over your finances because you and your spouse, if you're married, have to look at everything you own and put all that information in one place, so it's a great way to really think about your entire financial empire.

Stephanie Marini: Even from when my husband and I went through the will process, and we did have to create some type of financial vault. In this world, and two weeks later, I remembered things that I didn't include on that list. Starting that process now and then adding to it, again, this financial vault is not a legal document, but it is something that would consolidate all the information together so that your loved one can access it and then access the account further.

Robert Brokamp: Let's go through each section of the document and highlight what's important, starting with the vault setup.

Stephanie Marini: I would say the vault setup is where is this information going to be stored, iIs it like a one password, digital site? I know that's become very popular. Is it a file cabinet? Is it a safe? I'm not saying you have to share your passwords to your loved one today, but there should be one place to go where this is consolidated and where the resources will be. That's the first set of the setup. Where is it going to be and how will you let somebody know where that place is?

Robert Brokamp: There's so many options here. There's the virtual, just I heard about it on a podcast where someone's dad just told the podcast host, if I die, there's a file on my desktop, which is titled If I Die, and it has all the information. Or it's in a box or a safe, but you just have to decide where you're going to put it and then tell the select few people who need to know where to find it. A key part of this vault is going to be the account inventory. What's that?

Stephanie Marini: Pretty straightforward, the list of accounts, and I would include make sure to include crypto. But again, including the accounts listed out maybe what they're used for or maybe what payments come out from which account so that if someone, like you said, you are incapacitated, someone could come in and take over and manage your financial life. What the accounts are, maybe what they're used for, what automatic transfers come. But then including a login and password, maybe even a customer service number to reduce that number of steps that your loved one would have to take in order to get that access and see what they need to see. Think about it. Like, without this, if something were to happen to you, how would your relatives know where to find everything?

This is almost, it's essential to tell people not only your accounts, but all the other policies and everything you own. Well, I would say, especially in today's age, think about how spread out that information is. We don't live in an age where it's your local bank down the street where John knows you, your family, your mom, your dad. Nobody's lived more than five miles apart. They've watched you grow up. Not only are we spread across geography, but I can bank somewhere that might not even be in North Carolina because of today's digital age. Then to take it a step further, based on the resources available at my job, the resources as I've changed jobs, there could be accounts all over the place. Retirement accounts, old retirement accounts, where's your health insurance? Where's your life insurance? There's a lot. How could anybody even the closest people in my life, I don't even think my husband might know everything off the top of his head. If you think about if something happened to me, I hope he would be mourning or at least overwhelmed that it wouldn't come to mind right away.

Really, this is just putting it all together in one lovely document and resource for your family to use. You mentioned crypto, but boy, that's particularly important because people have all kinds of ways of story crypto wallets and USBs and the passwords. They're usually not held at Schwab and Vanguard, where you can find out if there's an account there, so just do an online search for articles about people losing access to their family members crypto because they didn't have the right information, so you definitely want to get that down somewhere. The next section you should have in your vault is information about executors and guardianship. If you have kids, you never want to think about this, but you have to think about it. What happens if you're not around to take care of them? This is where I could see it getting very, very messy within families, because everyone hopefully loves you and wants the best for your children, and everyone thinks that they know best for your children. Having a written out executor and guardianship for your kids, and I would also make sure that is clearly communicate to those parties responsible so that there isn't a surprise, I think is important, but this should also be included because if there are kids involved, there are immediate decisions that need to be made, and so having those available and what instructions with what those wishes are is very important.

Robert Brokamp: With the executor, it's always important to choose someone ideally in your state and someone who's very detail-oriented, and you might want to list a backup because you can't make someone be an executor, someone might say, yeah, I'll be the executor, and then they change their mind later. I will say, too, as somebody who's been an executor, if you take on that responsibility, you should ask for this document and as much information as that person is willing to share because you're going to be on the hook for a lot once you become the executor. Since you mentioned kids with guardianship, I'll also point out it could also be older adults. We have a former Foolish colleague whose brother was the guardian for their mother, and then his brother passed away, and he had to step in and be the guardian for his mother, but then find where all the accounts were and all that stuff, too, so that's another thing to think about.

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Robert Brokamp: Let's move on to life insurance.

Stephanie Marini: I think life insurance is separate. I kept it separate from the account side of things, because it is often that separate line item. Again, a lot of times there are beneficiary designations, but this one I kept because it could also have been from a current employer established a long time ago and then forgotten about, but knowing what life insurances are available to heirs or to the estate as a whole should something happen to you is important and not always something that people think about. Again, it's not something that you might get a statement for every week or every mont, and so if someone is stepping into your life, they might not even know it exists. That's not something that's talked about on a Sunday dinner table, oftentimes, so it needs to be included in this type of list in this type of vault.

Robert Brokamp: Since you mentioned employer, you might want to include information from your HR department because you don't know what employee benefits may be due to you or some other thing you had like a flexible spending account, company stock, so you want to have someone at the company to be able to reach out to. I guess you could expand it to really any professional, your financial planner, your accountant, someone else that you think is a professional who knows your situation who someone should contact if they need to. Let's move on to a relatively new development, and that is platform legacy settings.

Stephanie Marini: This is a new problem, new generation. But with so much being controlled and saved on our phones, our devices, our computers, having access to that cloud storage and just technology is important to set up ahead of time. Similarly to beneficiaries, that's something you can do now, but set up a trusted contact with Apple, Google, that would be able to be named so they can access, again, cloud storage, your phone, your history, either after a certain waiting period or providing medical legal documentation.

Robert Brokamp: Yeah, and this includes social media, too, Facebook has certain settings. Like, anything that you want someone to have access to, I just think it's interesting to think about, do you want your Facebook account to continue beyond when you've passed away? You might or you might not. But so whole set of things that, 20 or 30 years ago, people weren't thinking about, but certainly worth thinking about today. As a final part of it, you might want to have a letter of instruction, even though it comes at the beginning, tell us about the letter of instruction.

Stephanie Marini: I'm thinking about this is like a cover letter. What you're about to find behind all of these behind this page, it's all to come. A list of maybe just two to three immediate steps that you're going to need to take a list of maybe two to three red flags to watch out for. But almost that cover letter, table of contents, style page that should be front and center, and then on top of all of this vault.

Robert Brokamp: There could be other messages. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me mention Bob Hass Miller, a longtime Motley Fool member who every year would update what he called his letter from your dead husband for his wife to look at because he handled the family finances. Sadly, Bob passed away in 2016 and his wife, Sue, wrote a book about what it was like to move on from Bob, but talked about how valuable this letter was. Some of the aspects in that letter from Bob was very loving messages to Sue and his family, but also advice of, like, who to turn to and who to avoid. Like, family members, don't take any advice from these people. Anything like that that you just think people should know about moving on without you and handling your assets would be very helpful. This collection of documents is going to have a lot of sensitive information. Stephanie, any suggestions on where this should be kept?

Stephanie Marini: I mentioned one password early. I know that a lot of people are returning digital. I have to say I'm super old school. I have a copy in our home safe, and I have my sister is the closest person in my life outside of my husband, and so she knows the code to that safe and knows what is waiting for her should she need to go into it. I'm really thankful to have a great relationship with my family. I also am thankful that we are super open about a lot of these things, so everybody's got a financial vault. We use the same framework around it. Some are thicker than others, depending on our life stage, but everybody has a person and knows what steps they would need to take. I also think it's important that you mentioned you were an executor at one point, and it is cumbersome. It is labor-intensive, and if you can be mindful of that, too. I come from a bigger family. Spread out the wealth a little bit, should something happen to us. I think I'm very thankful for my parents who brought that up because they knew not to give too much power to one person, more so from the emotional weight of it all.

Robert Brokamp: Yeah, my wife and I have a box that's a kit, and you can buy these kits online that walk you through the process of inventorying all you have, providing the instructions, and often comes in a fireproof box or at least a fire-resistant box. We've told our four kids where to find this if they ever need it, so that's how we've handled that.

Stephanie Marini: I will also add because, again, I'm very thankful my family is open, and we have this conversation. But one thing that came up was my sister, who is the guardian or future guardian, if needed for my children. She asked questions, and she wanted additional information right, front and handy. It did also prompt those conversations. Her big thing was she wanted to know doctor's information right away. We are very close, but she doesn't live in my same town. Some of those daily tasks for my kids and updating those as they get older, I think is another way to keep things up to date. But having the conversation, making sure the person responsible, feels comfortable having anything available for them, they might have a preference. If you're talking to your kids and how to store it for them, that might be better digitally, especially if they're not close or nearby proximity wise, so I would add that to the mix.

Robert Brokamp: Well, Stephanie, any final thoughts about estate planning?

Stephanie Marini: I would just say that I've watched families fight over very little, and estate planning is not very little. I have felt myself personally, like I was drowning in sadness when I've had loved ones pass, and I could not imagine needing to put one foot in front of the other and make steps with no map or no road map. Having things written out both legally through a will, but then also more as this brain dump with a financial vault has given me a lot of peace of mind that I'm providing clarity and direction to my loved one should something happen to me.

Robert Brokamp: I'll add that I strongly encourage you to reach out to your family, talk to them about your estate plan, but then nudge them to talk about theirs. You don't need to know all the details unless they're executive, by the way. But otherwise, you don't need to know all the details. But you do want to make sure that they have a plan, because if they don't, you and the rest of your family will be the people who pay the price. On that cheery note, our show has come to an end. Thank you so much for spending part of your weekend with us and thanks to Bart Shannon, the engineer for this episode.

As always, people on this program may have interest in the investments they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell investments based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. You see, our full advertising disclosure, please check out for show notes. I'm Robert Brokamp. Fool on, everybody.

Charles Schwab is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Robert Brokamp, CFP, EA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool recommends Charles Schwab and recommends the following options: short September 2026 $95 calls on Charles Schwab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.