2026 Tax Law Changes

By Jeffrey Meenes, CFP®

Ed and Susan hired a good estate attorney six years ago. They signed a revocable trust, updated their wills, executed healthcare proxies and powers of attorney. The attorney sent everything back in a leather binder, and they put it on the shelf in the study.

Every time they walked past it, they felt relieved. That part of their financial life was finished.

It wasn't.

One of the most common things I find when I review a new client's estate documents is that the plan on paper and the plan that will actually happen are two different plans. The documents are usually fine. The attorney did the work they were hired to do. But somewhere between the signing and today, the plan quietly stopped being true.

The Belief That Creates the Gap

Most people treat estate planning as a legal project with a finish line. You meet with the attorney, you make the hard decisions, you sign the documents, and you're protected.

That belief isn't wrong. The documents matter enormously, and getting them right requires a skilled attorney. But it's incomplete in one important way: signing is the halfway point, not the finish line.

The document only works if it gets used.

And most estate plans don't fail all at once. They fail one small oversight at a time, often over many years — quietly, invisibly, and usually in ways no one discovers until the moment the plan is actually needed.

Where the Gap Opens

Your beneficiary designations don't care what your will says.

This is the most common and most consequential break, and it surprises nearly everyone. Your IRA, your 401(k), your life insurance — these pass by beneficiary designation, not by will. A form you filled out at a job you left in 2004 will override a beautifully drafted trust signed last year. The will governs some assets. The designations govern others. If no one is checking that the two agree, they drift apart.

A trust that isn't funded is an empty box.

Signing a trust doesn't put anything in it. Accounts have to be retitled. Deeds have to be recorded. And this is where new accounts quietly undo old planning: the brokerage account opened three years ago, the IRA rolled over after retirement, the bank account moved to a new institution. Each one was a reasonable decision on its own. None of them were checked against the trust. The plan was built around the accounts that existed the day it was signed, and life kept opening new ones.

The people in the plan often don't know they're in it.

The successor trustee has never been told. The healthcare agent has never seen the document. The children don't know which attorney drafted it, where the originals are, or what accounts exist. A plan that only one person can execute is a plan that fails precisely when that person can't execute it.

The plan fits a life they no longer have.

Six years is long enough for a parent to die, a child to divorce, a business to sell, a state of residence to change. Documents don't update themselves, and no one sends a reminder. The plan was right for the life they had when they signed it.

Read those four together and a pattern emerges. Not one of them is a drafting error. Not one of them would be fixed by a better attorney. Every one of them is a coordination failure — something that had to be maintained, and wasn't.

Why This Happens

The structure of the problem explains the outcome.

The attorney drafts the documents. That is their job, and a good one does it well. But the attorney doesn't see the beneficiary form on your 401(k), doesn't retitle your brokerage account, doesn't know about the IRA you opened last year, and doesn't get a call when your circumstances change. The accounts sit with the custodian. The tax consequences sit with your CPA. The decisions sit with you.

Everyone does their piece. No one owns the seam.

And the seam is exactly where estate plans fail. The estate plan is the one part of a financial life where the work most likely to fail is the work nobody was assigned.

What Fixing It Actually Looked Like

When Ed and Susan finally went through it, they braced for bad news — new documents, new legal fees, starting over.

That isn't what happened.

Over the course of three afternoons, they updated four beneficiary designations, retitled two accounts into their trust, created a current inventory of every account and where it lived, and sat down with their daughter to explain who would do what if something happened to them. There were no new documents. There was no new attorney.

They didn't need a better estate plan. They needed the one they already had to be true.

Why This Belongs Inside the Planning Relationship

Estate work is often treated as a one-time legal engagement, and that framing is precisely what creates the gap. The documents are legal. But the execution touches your accounts, your beneficiary forms, your tax picture, and your family — and it has to keep touching them as your life changes.

That is coordination work, and it doesn't end at the signing. It means the beneficiary designations get checked when an account is opened. It means new assets get titled correctly the first time, not discovered years later. It means the documents get revisited when your circumstances change, in coordination with your attorney, rather than when someone finally thinks to look.

Your attorney builds the plan. Someone has to make sure it stays true.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my will control my IRA? Generally, no. Retirement accounts pass by beneficiary designation, which takes precedence over your will. This is why an outdated designation can override even a carefully drafted estate plan, and why reviewing those forms is one of the highest-value things you can do.

What does it mean to "fund" a trust? Funding means actually transferring assets into the trust — retitling accounts, recording deeds, updating ownership. A trust that has been signed but never funded generally does not control the assets you intended it to control, and those assets may pass through probate anyway.

How often should I review my estate documents? There's no universal rule, but the practical trigger is change: a death, a marriage or divorce in the family, a move to another state, a business sale, a new account, or a meaningful change in tax law. In the absence of any of those, a periodic review every few years is reasonable.

Do I still need an attorney if I work with a financial advisor? Yes. Drafting estate documents is legal work and belongs with a qualified estate attorney. The planning relationship coordinates around that work — beneficiary designations, account titling, tax consequences, and keeping the plan aligned with your circumstances over time.

Isn't the implementation my attorney's job? Attorneys draft the documents and typically advise on what needs to happen next. But the accounts, the beneficiary forms, and the ongoing changes sit outside their view. Someone has to connect the legal plan to the actual accounts — and that gap is where most plans quietly fail.

If you're approaching retirement and want clarity around the decisions ahead, schedule an introductory call.

About the Author

Jeffrey Meenes, CFP®, is the founder of Meenes Wealth Partners, a fee-only, flat-fee fiduciary RIA in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. He helps pre-retirees and retirees navigate the financial decisions surrounding the transition into and through retirement, with a focus on tax planning, retirement income strategy, and evidence-based investment management.