Half the work an estate planning attorney does in a first meeting is unwinding bad assumptions. Not from clients who haven’t thought about it. From clients who have, and who walked in with a plan they built from a friend’s divorce, a parent’s probate, a podcast, and a $69 online template. The bones of the plan are wrong. The labels are wrong. And the part they’re proudest of is usually the part that is going to fail.

If you are sitting at the kitchen table reading this with a folder of beneficiary forms next to you, here are the misconceptions worth catching now, before signing anything.

“I have a will, so I’m covered”

This is the most common assumption and the least true. A will does one thing well: it directs how probate-eligible assets get distributed when the testator dies. It does not avoid probate. It does not control assets that pass by beneficiary designation (life insurance, retirement accounts, transfer-on-death registrations). It does not help if the testator becomes incapacitated. It does not protect minor children from a court-appointed conservator managing their inheritance until age 18, at which point an 18-year-old gets a check and the careful planning becomes a down payment on a Mustang.

A will is the floor, not the plan. If an estate has a house, retirement accounts, life insurance, a small business interest, or minor children, the family almost certainly needs more than that. Trusts and probate avoidance tools fill the gaps a will leaves wide open.

“Joint ownership solves probate”

Adding an adult child to the deed feels like a clean shortcut. It is not. Joint tenancy with right of survivorship does avoid probate on that asset, but it also: gives the child a present ownership interest, exposes the property to the child’s creditors and any divorce, triggers a partial gift for tax purposes, and generally eliminates the step-up in basis on the share they were “given,” which can mean a five- or six-figure capital gains bill when they sell.

The cleaner tools (a revocable living trust, a transfer-on-death deed where state law permits, a properly funded irrevocable trust for higher-net-worth situations) get the same probate-avoidance result without the side effects. People reach for joint ownership because it sounds simple. Estate planners who clean up the messes will tell you it is the single most expensive shortcut in the field.

“Beneficiary designations don’t really matter, the will controls”

Wrong, and it costs families regularly. Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, life insurance, and TOD/POD bank accounts override a will. Always. If a 401(k) still names an ex-spouse from 2009 because nobody updated the form, the ex gets the 401(k). The will is irrelevant to that asset. Probate practitioners regularly cite cases like a $400,000 IRA passing to a deceased parent’s estate because the named beneficiary predeceased and no contingent was listed, throwing the money straight into probate after the entire planning effort had been built to avoid it.

Audit beneficiary forms once a year. After every divorce, remarriage, birth, or death. Print the confirmations and put them with the rest of the plan.

“Powers of attorney are for old people”

Disability and incapacity hit at every age. Car accidents. Strokes. A bad fall. For anyone over 18 without a durable power of attorney for finances and a healthcare directive (sometimes called a healthcare proxy or living will, depending on the state), the alternative is a guardianship or conservatorship proceeding in court. That is expensive, public, and slow. It freezes financial decisions for weeks. A spouse cannot just walk into the bank and pay the mortgage if only one name is on the account.

Two documents. Twenty pages total. They are the highest-leverage part of the entire plan and the most often skipped.

“I’ll do it after [life event]”

After the wedding. After the baby is born. After the house closes. After hitting retirement. The estate plan is always the next thing on the list, and the next thing on the list is the thing that doesn’t get done. The honest version: the people who finally do the plan are the ones whose neighbor just died without one and watched the family get torn apart for two years over a beach condo.

There’s no need for certainty about what life will look like in 20 years. The need is for a plan that covers the next five and that is structured so it can be amended cheaply when things change. Most revocable trust plans can be updated for a fraction of the original cost. The plan is supposed to evolve. Waiting for the “right time” is how people end up with no plan and a probate judge making decisions for them.

What an actual first meeting should cover

A good first meeting with an estate planning attorney is not someone selling a packet. It looks like this:

A real inventory of what the client owns and how each asset is titled (this part takes longer than people expect).
A discussion of who they want making decisions if they can’t, and the order of succession if their first choice can’t serve.
A conversation about minor children, special-needs beneficiaries, blended families, and any creditor or divorce concerns in the next generation.
A clear-eyed look at probate, taxes, and incapacity, in that order.
Then a recommendation: a will plus directives may be enough, or a revocable trust may be the better fit, or something more layered if there’s a business or out-of-state property in play.

The team at McKarcher Law walks clients through this in the first sit-down rather than sending them home with forms to fill out alone. For a sense of what working with an estate planning attorney should actually feel like, that’s a useful starting point.

The plan you build now is not the plan you’ll die with. It is the first version. Build the first version this year.