A Practical Estate Planning Checklist

A checklist is only useful if it reflects how Florida actually works. Below is a practical sequence for Palm Beach residents, organized around the real choice most people face: build your plan around a will, around a revocable trust, or lean heavily on beneficiary designations. Each route handles probate, homestead, and incapacity differently.

Step 1: Inventory What You Own and How It Is Titled

List your home, accounts, vehicles, business interests, and life insurance. For each, note how it is titled and whether it already names a beneficiary. Titling decides almost everything—jointly held property and accounts with valid beneficiary designations pass outside probate no matter what your will says.

Step 2: Choose Your Core Route

A will-based plan is simplest and cheapest to set up, but assets passing under the will go through Florida probate—either summary administration (for smaller or older estates) or formal administration under the Probate Code. A trust-based plan using a revocable living trust under Chapter 736 costs more upfront and requires you to retitle assets into the trust, but it generally keeps those assets out of probate and provides for incapacity. A beneficiary-designation plan relies on payable-on-death accounts and named beneficiaries to move assets directly; it is cheap but fragile, because one outdated designation can derail the whole plan. Most solid plans combine all three.

Step 3: Address the Homestead

Your Palm Beach residence is likely protected homestead under Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution. Homestead carries powerful creditor protection but also strict rules on how it can pass—especially if you have a spouse or minor children. A Lady Bird deed (an enhanced life estate deed) lets you keep full control and homestead benefits during life while passing the property automatically at death, avoiding probate without giving up control. Confirm your homestead strategy fits your family situation rather than assuming the deed alone solves it.

Step 4: Plan for Incapacity, Not Just Death

Every route needs a durable power of attorney under Chapter 709, a designation of health care surrogate, and a living will. Without these, your family may need a guardianship proceeding in Palm Beach County—slow, public, and expensive. A revocable trust also helps here, because a successor trustee can manage trust assets if you become unable to.

Step 5: Reconcile Beneficiaries Across Everything

Pull every beneficiary designation and check it against your will or trust. A retirement account still naming an ex-spouse overrides whatever your will says. This reconciliation is where the beneficiary-designation route quietly fails for people who never update their forms.

Step 6: Mind the Elective Share

If you are married, Florida’s elective share (§732.2065 and following) generally entitles a surviving spouse to 30% of the elective estate, which reaches well beyond probate assets. You cannot fully disinherit a spouse without a valid waiver. Build this into the plan rather than discovering it later.

Step 7: Store, Share, and Revisit

Keep originals secure and tell your personal representative or trustee where they are. Revisit after any move, marriage, divorce, birth, or major purchase—and confirm everything still reflects Florida law if you relocated here from another state.

Talk to a Florida Attorney

This checklist points you in the right direction, but homestead, the elective share, and probate choices turn on details. A Florida estate planning attorney serving Palm Beach can tailor the route to your assets and family. This is general information, not legal advice—consult a licensed Florida attorney before acting.