What documents do I need besides a living trust?

Three documents sit alongside the trust, and they are the ones most likely to be needed first.

People come in asking for a trust and leave with four documents. The other three are not upsells. They do things a trust structurally cannot do, and they are the ones most likely to be needed suddenly.

A pour-over will

The trust only governs what it owns. A pour-over will is the safety net: it catches anything that was never transferred in and directs it into the trust. It is also the only place you can nominate a guardian for minor children. A trust has no power to do that, because guardianship is a question for a court and not for a private document.

A durable power of attorney for finances

This names who signs for you if you cannot sign for yourself. Note the word durable: an ordinary power of attorney ends at incapacity, which is the exact moment you need one. Without a durable power, a family facing incapacity has one route left, and it is a conservatorship — a court proceeding, public and far more expensive than the document that would have avoided it.

An advance health care directive

This names who decides medically and records what you would want. It is also what gets a hospital to talk to your family at all. Sign a HIPAA authorization alongside it, because the right to make a decision is not much use without the right to see the chart.

The step people skip

Tell the people you named. The most common failure we see is not a badly drafted directive. It is a perfectly good one in a drawer, unknown to the daughter named in it, while a hospital asks a question nobody present can answer.

Give each agent a copy when you sign. It costs nothing and it is the difference between a document and a plan.