Frequently Asked Questions

Our guided process walks you through each section at your own pace. You'll answer questions about your family, your property, and your wishes — things like who should inherit what, who should take care of your kids, and who you trust to handle your finances or medical decisions if you can't.

You don't need to have everything figured out before you start. The step-by-step guide explains each section as you go and helps you think through your choices. You can save your progress and come back anytime — you don't have to do it all in one sitting.

Our documents are professionally developed and structured to reflect generally accepted legal standards, with state-specific considerations built in. When properly completed and executed in accordance with your state's signing and notarization requirements, they are intended to be legally enforceable. We provide step-by-step guidance to help ensure proper execution.

While many individuals can complete their estate planning documents without hiring an attorney, we recommend seeking legal review if your situation involves more complex circumstances — such as blended families, significant assets, business ownership, special needs beneficiaries, or unique distribution plans. Legal review is optional, but it can provide added assurance in more intricate situations.

You get six documents that work together to cover the most important areas of estate planning:

Revocable Living Trust — Holds your property (home, accounts, etc.) so it can pass to your loved ones without going through probate, which is the court process that can take months and cost thousands of dollars. You stay in full control of everything while you're alive.

Last Will and Testament — Covers anything not in your trust. It's also where you name a guardian for minor children — the person who would raise them if something happened to you.

Financial Power of Attorney — Names someone you trust to handle money matters on your behalf if you're ever unable to — things like paying bills, managing bank accounts, or filing taxes.

Healthcare Power of Attorney — Names someone to make medical decisions for you if you can't speak for yourself, like choosing doctors or approving treatments.

Living Will — Spells out your wishes for end-of-life medical care so your family and doctors know what you want if you're ever in a situation where you can't communicate.

HIPAA Authorization — Gives the people you choose permission to access your medical records. Without this, privacy laws can prevent even close family members from getting information about your health.

Our documents are designed to cover the needs of most individuals and families — whether you're single, married, have children, or are planning ahead on your own. They work well for people with straightforward goals like leaving property to family members, naming someone to handle finances or medical decisions, and keeping things out of probate court.

If your situation is more involved — for example, you own a business, have children from multiple marriages, have a family member with special needs who receives government benefits, or have a high-value estate with complex tax considerations — you may benefit from having an attorney review your documents. You can still use our platform to create them, and then have a lawyer review the finished product if you'd like that extra layer of confidence.

Yes, and it's important to keep your plan current. Life changes — like getting married, having a child, getting divorced, moving to a new state, or losing a loved one — can all affect what your documents should say.

Your subscription includes unlimited updates. You tell us what changed in your life, and we walk you through exactly which documents need to be updated and what to change. This way you don't have to remember which of your six documents mentions your address, or which ones name your ex-spouse — we handle that for you.

Any documents you've already downloaded are yours to keep forever — canceling your subscription doesn't take them away. They're real legal documents on your computer, not locked behind our platform.

What you'd lose access to is the ability to make future changes or use our guided life-event updates. If you ever need to make updates later, you can resubscribe at any time.

Yes. You can create your account, answer the guided questions, and build your entire estate plan without paying anything or entering a card. While you build, you'll see your documents take shape — the section structure with your details, with the full legal text locked. When your plan is ready, $149 unlocks everything: the complete text of every section, PDF and Word downloads, and your first year of unlimited changes and guided life-event updates.

Building your plan is free. When you finalize, $149 unlocks the complete legal text and downloads of all six documents and includes a full year of updates. After year 1, your $19/year subscription auto-renews to keep your access active — unlimited changes and guided life-event updates that walk you through what to revise when something in your life changes.

You can cancel anytime. If you cancel, you keep your downloaded documents forever — they're real legal documents on your computer, not locked behind our platform.

Yes — one account covers your household. Add your spouse or partner and they get their own complete document set, free to build just like yours. You can copy any of your finished documents to them — names and roles are swapped automatically (you each name the other as executor or agent, the way most couples do), and you review every change before anything is saved.

When their documents are ready, a one-time $79 add-on unlocks their full set — and your single $19/year renewal covers both of you. There's no second subscription.

Each state has its own rules about estate planning documents — things like how many witnesses you need when you sign, whether notarization is required, and specific language that must be included. A document that's valid in one state may not meet the requirements in another.

If you move, you should review and update your documents through our platform. We'll generate new versions that reflect your new state's rules. In some cases, you'll need to re-sign and have the new documents witnessed or notarized according to your new state's requirements. These updates are included with your subscription.

We take your privacy seriously. Estate planning involves sensitive personal details — your assets, family relationships, medical wishes — and we treat all of it as confidential.

Your data is encrypted both when it's being transmitted and when it's stored. We never sell, share, or give your personal information to third parties. Only you can access your estate plan through your account.

A Will is a document that says who gets your belongings after you pass away. It only takes effect after death, and it has to go through a court process called probate. During probate, a judge reviews the Will, debts are settled, and then your property is distributed. This process is public — anyone can look up the details — and it can take 6 to 18 months or longer.

A Trust is a separate arrangement where you place your property (like your home, bank accounts, or investments) into the trust while you're still alive. You remain in control and can use everything normally. When you pass away, the person you've chosen (called a trustee) distributes your property according to your instructions — without going to court. It's faster, private, and typically less expensive for your family.

Most people benefit from having both. The Trust handles the property you've placed into it, and the Will acts as a safety net — catching anything that wasn't transferred to the trust and naming a guardian for minor children, which only a Will can do.

If you're ever in an accident, have a serious illness, or for any reason can't make decisions for yourself, your estate plan has you covered.

Your Financial Power of Attorney lets someone you've chosen step in and handle everyday money matters — paying your mortgage, managing your bank accounts, dealing with insurance. Your Healthcare Power of Attorney lets someone you trust make medical decisions on your behalf, like approving surgery or choosing a care facility.

Without these documents in place, your family would likely need to go to court and ask a judge to appoint someone to make these decisions for you. That process can take weeks or months, costs money, and the judge may not pick the person you would have chosen.

Probate is the legal process that happens in court after someone passes away. Its purpose is to verify the person's Will (if they had one), pay off any remaining debts, and distribute what's left to the right people. A judge oversees the entire process.

Probate applies to any property that was owned solely in the deceased person's name and wasn't set up to transfer automatically. This includes things like a house titled only in their name, individual bank accounts, vehicles, and personal belongings. If there's no Will, the court still goes through probate — but instead of following the person's wishes, it follows the state's default rules for who gets what.

Some assets skip probate entirely on their own, regardless of whether you have a trust. Life insurance payouts, retirement accounts (like a 401k or IRA), and bank accounts with a named beneficiary go directly to that person. Joint bank accounts and jointly owned property with survivorship rights also pass automatically to the surviving owner.

The cost of probate varies by state and the size of the estate, but it typically includes court filing fees, attorney fees, and sometimes a fee for the executor — the person managing the process. In total, probate can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to 5% or more of the estate's value. For a $500,000 estate, that could mean $10,000 to $25,000 or more in fees alone.

Probate also takes time. Most cases take 6 to 18 months, but complicated or contested estates can drag on for years. During that time, your family may not be able to sell the house, access bank accounts, or distribute belongings. The process is also entirely public — court records are open, so anyone can look up what you owned and who received it.

One of the main reasons people create a Revocable Living Trust is to help their family avoid probate. Property that's been transferred into the trust while you're alive doesn't go through the court process — your chosen trustee can distribute it directly according to your instructions, usually within weeks instead of months, with no court fees and no public record.

If you pass away without any estate planning documents, the state decides what happens to everything you own. Each state has default rules — called intestacy laws — that dictate who gets your property. These rules follow a fixed order (usually spouse first, then children, then parents, then siblings) and may not match what you would have wanted. For example, a long-term partner, a close friend, or a favorite charity would receive nothing under these default rules.

Your family would also have to go through probate court, which adds cost and delay. And without a Healthcare Power of Attorney or Living Will, if you become seriously ill or injured, your family may need to petition a court for the right to make medical or financial decisions on your behalf — a stressful process during an already difficult time.

Having a plan in place means you decide what happens, not the state.

Yes. Estate plans aren't meant to be "set it and forget it." As your life changes, your plan should change with it. Getting married, having kids, buying a home, moving states, or losing a family member are all reasons to update your documents.

Your subscription includes unlimited changes anytime. Our guided life-event updates make it easy — you tell us what happened, and we walk you through each document that needs attention so nothing gets overlooked. Once you've made your updates, you'll download fresh copies and sign them according to your state's requirements.