Reports
Estate Planning Field Report - May 2026
We're asked a lot of estate planning questions, here's what we're hearing this month.
This post is adapted from today's Next in Line newsletter for advisors:
As we spend more and more time with advisors and their clients, certain patterns of questions emerge. This post highlights what we’ve been hearing.
In last month’s report, we discussed what we have been seeing in the field and highlighted three things:
Those doing the most estate planning aren’t who you might expect (e.g., single individuals and same-sex couples).
Those who do plan aren’t doing what you might expect (e.g., inconsistent treatment of children).
Everyone thinks they “need” a trust but don’t necessarily understand why.
This time, let's talk about what questions are coming up most often from advisors and their clients. Some are more common, some are more unexpected. Here are some highlights.
1. What happens if my spouse remarries?
Young parents are a prime target for estate planning. It’s an ideal time to set up a plan for descendants. But a common question arises:
How do I take care of my spouse while also making sure assets ultimately pass to my children and not my spouse’s new spouse?
It’s a reasonable question. If someone is widowed at a very young age, the likelihood of remarriage is high, along with the possibility that the surviving spouse may have more children.
This leads to discussions about marital trusts.
Marital trusts are designed to address some of these concerns by allowing the surviving spouse to continue benefiting from assets during life while preserving guardrails around ultimate disposition. Depending on the structure, the spouse receives some degree of income and principal distributions, while the remaining assets are ultimately preserved for children or other beneficiaries.
For clients who push for a marital trust, there needs to be a careful balancing between how much discretion to give trustees in permitting distributions to the spouse versus preservation for descendants. For example, it actually generally requires a broader discretion standard to protect the marital trust assets from creditors; the more enforceable a beneficiary’s right to distributions becomes, the more opportunities there may be for outside parties to attempt to access those assets.
At the same time, clients often step back and ask a critical question:
Do we really need this?
The simple answer is, for many, no. Not every estate plan needs multiple layers of protection. For many families, outright distributions are entirely appropriate and may avoid administrative burdens that are unnecessary in context.
But for blended families, significant wealth, creditor-sensitive professions or clients with strong concerns about preserving family assets over generations, these structures can become very important. So it’s ultimately a balance, between the benefits of protection and the burdens of complexity.
2. I heard I can escape “everything” by using a Medicaid Trust
The motivation behind Medicaid trust planning is reasonable and relatable: the fear of spending down an entire lifetime of savings on long-term care expenses.
Medicaid trusts are designed to remove assets from the client’s ownership for Medicaid eligibility purposes, while still allowing those assets to remain available for family members in some capacity.
But what people don’t realize is: there are major tradeoffs. Clients generally need to give up meaningful control over the transferred assets. In that regard, it’s a similar discussion to SLATs. The potential benefits may be substantial, but they typically come at the cost of flexibility. It raises the key question: are you really okay to legally part ways with these assets?
And timing is critical, as there are specific look-back period rules that limit the ability to quickly part ways with assets for Medicaid qualification purposes.
So next time a client says they think they can beat the system just by making a Medicaid trust, just remember, it can’t be that easy.
3. Do I really need a will?
Finally, we continue to hear a consistent question from clients of all ages and backgrounds:
If my situation is straightforward, do I really need a will?
The short answer remains yes.
This question comes up often from highly successful and sophisticated individuals who simply assume that the law will default to what they would have wanted anyway. Unfortunately, intestacy statutes often do not operate the way people expect.
Many people assume that if they are married, everything automatically passes to their spouse. In reality, that depends heavily on state law and whether there are children involved. And the same family structure could have a completely different outcome depending on which state’s rules apply.
For parents of minor children, the issue becomes even more important because wills appoint a guardian for minor children. Without that nomination in a will, the decision may ultimately fall to a court.
Even in very simple estates, documenting wishes matters. A basic will may not feel sophisticated, but it often provides clarity, efficiency and peace of mind at moments when families need those the most.
This post is adapted from today's Next in Line newsletter for advisors:
As we spend more and more time with advisors and their clients, certain patterns of questions emerge. This post highlights what we’ve been hearing.
In last month’s report, we discussed what we have been seeing in the field and highlighted three things:
Those doing the most estate planning aren’t who you might expect (e.g., single individuals and same-sex couples).
Those who do plan aren’t doing what you might expect (e.g., inconsistent treatment of children).
Everyone thinks they “need” a trust but don’t necessarily understand why.
This time, let's talk about what questions are coming up most often from advisors and their clients. Some are more common, some are more unexpected. Here are some highlights.
1. What happens if my spouse remarries?
Young parents are a prime target for estate planning. It’s an ideal time to set up a plan for descendants. But a common question arises:
How do I take care of my spouse while also making sure assets ultimately pass to my children and not my spouse’s new spouse?
It’s a reasonable question. If someone is widowed at a very young age, the likelihood of remarriage is high, along with the possibility that the surviving spouse may have more children.
This leads to discussions about marital trusts.
Marital trusts are designed to address some of these concerns by allowing the surviving spouse to continue benefiting from assets during life while preserving guardrails around ultimate disposition. Depending on the structure, the spouse receives some degree of income and principal distributions, while the remaining assets are ultimately preserved for children or other beneficiaries.
For clients who push for a marital trust, there needs to be a careful balancing between how much discretion to give trustees in permitting distributions to the spouse versus preservation for descendants. For example, it actually generally requires a broader discretion standard to protect the marital trust assets from creditors; the more enforceable a beneficiary’s right to distributions becomes, the more opportunities there may be for outside parties to attempt to access those assets.
At the same time, clients often step back and ask a critical question:
Do we really need this?
The simple answer is, for many, no. Not every estate plan needs multiple layers of protection. For many families, outright distributions are entirely appropriate and may avoid administrative burdens that are unnecessary in context.
But for blended families, significant wealth, creditor-sensitive professions or clients with strong concerns about preserving family assets over generations, these structures can become very important. So it’s ultimately a balance, between the benefits of protection and the burdens of complexity.
2. I heard I can escape “everything” by using a Medicaid Trust
The motivation behind Medicaid trust planning is reasonable and relatable: the fear of spending down an entire lifetime of savings on long-term care expenses.
Medicaid trusts are designed to remove assets from the client’s ownership for Medicaid eligibility purposes, while still allowing those assets to remain available for family members in some capacity.
But what people don’t realize is: there are major tradeoffs. Clients generally need to give up meaningful control over the transferred assets. In that regard, it’s a similar discussion to SLATs. The potential benefits may be substantial, but they typically come at the cost of flexibility. It raises the key question: are you really okay to legally part ways with these assets?
And timing is critical, as there are specific look-back period rules that limit the ability to quickly part ways with assets for Medicaid qualification purposes.
So next time a client says they think they can beat the system just by making a Medicaid trust, just remember, it can’t be that easy.
3. Do I really need a will?
Finally, we continue to hear a consistent question from clients of all ages and backgrounds:
If my situation is straightforward, do I really need a will?
The short answer remains yes.
This question comes up often from highly successful and sophisticated individuals who simply assume that the law will default to what they would have wanted anyway. Unfortunately, intestacy statutes often do not operate the way people expect.
Many people assume that if they are married, everything automatically passes to their spouse. In reality, that depends heavily on state law and whether there are children involved. And the same family structure could have a completely different outcome depending on which state’s rules apply.
For parents of minor children, the issue becomes even more important because wills appoint a guardian for minor children. Without that nomination in a will, the decision may ultimately fall to a court.
Even in very simple estates, documenting wishes matters. A basic will may not feel sophisticated, but it often provides clarity, efficiency and peace of mind at moments when families need those the most.
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