Estate Planning Isn’t Just a Will: 3 Things Most People Get Wrong
Tall Oaks Podcast, Episode 123 — with Branden DuCharme and Carisa Bertrand
Estate planning is far more than having a will. A complete plan has three parts most people overlook: your taxable estate, your probate estate, and gifting. The trouble is that most “finished” estate plans aren’t actually doing what their owners think, because the documents were never completed, the trust was never funded, or a single beneficiary form quietly overrides everything else.
When we sit down with families and open the trust binder, we find it more often than not: blank pages the attorney meant for them to finish, homes never titled into the trust, and accounts that were never funded into it. The binder looks complete. In practice, it isn’t doing much.
In this episode, Branden and Carisa break down what a real estate plan looks like — and the three components everyone should understand before assuming they’re “done.”
Is estate planning only about what happens after you die?
No. There’s a lifetime component too: making sure someone can act on your behalf if you’re incapacitated, out of the country, or otherwise unable to sign for yourself. That’s a conversation for another day. This episode focuses on the part people usually mean — what happens to your assets when you’re no longer around — and it breaks into three pieces.
Will you owe estate tax? Understanding your taxable estate
Start with the good news: most people won’t owe federal estate tax. As of 2026, the federal exemption is roughly $15 million per person, which means about $30 million for a married couple. If you’re comfortably under that, federal estate tax probably isn’t your main concern.
A few things worth remembering, though:
States have their own rules. Some states levy their own estate tax, sometimes at much lower thresholds than the federal one. Where you live matters.
The exemption is per spouse, and claiming it correctly requires filing the right elections. The administrative side matters.
A normal revocable living trust doesn’t remove assets from your taxable estate. It helps with probate (more on that below), but those assets are still counted in your gross estate. To move assets out of the taxable estate, you’re generally looking at an irrevocable trust — for example, an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT), where a policy is purchased and funded inside the trust so the death benefit lands outside your estate. It’s a conservative, precise tool, easy to set up wrong, and most relevant for families near the exemption limit.
If your net worth is well south of those thresholds and you’re in the drawdown phase of your plan, estate tax likely isn’t the headline. If you’re near the threshold and still in your 40s, that’s exactly when laying the groundwork pays off.
What is probate, and why do people want to avoid it?
Probate is the court process that determines what your assets are and where they go — essentially the state’s default plan for your estate. As Branden puts it: everyone has an estate plan. It’s either your plan or the state’s.
Two reasons to want to avoid it:
It’s slow. Even a straightforward case commonly runs 9–12 months, and it can get expensive.
It’s public. Probate is a matter of public record. For business owners especially, that can mean a closely held company’s affairs become visible to competitors. If you’re a partner in a small business, make sure everyone’s estate planning is buttoned up so the business doesn’t get dragged into the open.
You can’t route everything around probate, which is why attorneys often use a pour-over will — it sweeps anything left outside the trust (the proverbial pots and pans, or an unfinanced vehicle that never got re-titled) back into it. That will still passes through probate, but it’s usually a clean, intentional process.
Can a beneficiary form override your will?
Yes — and this is the point that surprises people most. A direct beneficiary designation on a life insurance policy, 401(k), IRA, or a transfer-on-death bank or brokerage account skips probate entirely. But it also supersedes everything else in your plan.
If your account names a prior spouse as beneficiary, that’s who inherits it — no matter what your will says, no matter how recent, notarized, or clearly intentioned. It doesn’t matter if an attorney drafted your will or if you recorded yourself signing it the day before you passed. The beneficiary form wins. Review your beneficiary designations across every account.
How does gifting affect your estate plan?
Gifting won’t be a tax event for most people, but it’s an easy administrative trap. The annual gift exclusion in 2026 is $19,000 per person. Give someone up to that amount and there’s no paperwork. Go a dollar over and you’re technically filing a gift tax return.
A few practical notes:
Married couples can split gifts. Two spouses can each give up to the annual amount to the same person, effectively doubling what passes without a filing.
Direct support is an exception. Paying tuition or medical bills directly to the institution — the college, the hospital — doesn’t count against the gift limit. Don’t hand over the cash; pay the bill directly.
Why gifting a home early can cost your kids thousands
Say Mom and Dad bought the family cabin for $50,000 decades ago, and it’s worth $500,000 today. If they add a child to the title while they’re alive, that child inherits the original $50,000 basis. Sell later for $500,000, and there’s a $450,000 capital gain — with taxes due on it.
If instead the home passes through a trust at death, the basis steps up to the current $500,000 value. The kids can sell at $500,000 with essentially no capital gain. For families under the estate tax exemption, that step-up in basis is one of the most valuable tools available — and gifting the home early can accidentally throw it away.
The same logic shows up in long-term care planning. Selling a home to fund care can trigger a large capital gain that a little planning — sometimes just family liquidity, formal or informal — could have avoided. And it usually means multi-generational conversations that are worth having early, before anyone is forced to sell an illiquid asset in a hurry.
The bottom line
Estate planning is far more than “am I above or below $30 million.” It’s about making sure your plan actually does what you think it does. A lot of people have a clear idea of what they want to happen — but their documents don’t say it, their trust was never funded, or a beneficiary form quietly overrides the whole thing.
Review your plan regularly. Check your beneficiary designations across every account. And build a team — attorney, financial advisor, CPA — that can help you understand the implications of your choices and make sure the documents follow the plan you actually intend.
Consider this your mid-summer nudge to take a look.
Ready to review your own estate plan? Reach out to the DuCharme Wealth Management team — we’d be glad to help you make sure your plan does what you intend.