Estate Readiness Check

Almost nobody's estate plan fails because of tax. It fails because a beneficiary form was never updated, or nobody could find the password, or the reasoning behind the division was never said out loud. Tick what is already true in your household. What stays unticked is the list, and most of it costs an afternoon rather than a fee.

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Documents

A current will Without one, the state's formula decides, and it will not match your intentions. Psalm 39:6 pictures a man heaping up riches without knowing who will gather them.
Named guardians for minor children The single most important line in the will if you have young children, and the one most often left blank.
Financial power of attorney Covers incapacity rather than death: the gap most people miss entirely, and the one that arrives first.
Healthcare directive Spares your family from guessing under the worst possible pressure.

Accounts

Beneficiaries current on every account Beneficiary designations usually OVERRIDE the will. A stale one sends money to an ex-spouse regardless of what the will says.
Property titled the way you intend Joint titling and transfer-on-death registrations bypass probate, deliberately, or by accident.
A written list of accounts and debts Executors routinely spend months finding things. One page saves that.

Practical

Someone can actually get to it all Passwords, safe combinations, and where the documents physically are. A perfect plan nobody can open is not a plan.
A letter of intent, in your own words Not legally binding, and often the most valuable page in the folder: it explains the reasoning so the division does not read as favouritism.
You have told them while you are alive Luke 12:13-15 opens with a man asking Jesus to settle an inheritance dispute. Silence now is a fight later.

Legacy

Charitable giving is in the plan The one part of an estate you can direct entirely by conviction rather than by obligation.
Heirs are being prepared, not just enriched Proverbs 20:21 warns that an inheritance gained hastily does not end well; Ecclesiastes 2:18-21 is the fear that it passes to someone who wastes it. Teaching outranks transferring.

A checklist, not legal advice, and nothing here is saved or sent; reloading clears it. Estate law is state- and country-specific, and the documents must be executed properly to work at all: an attorney is worth the fee here, and a cheap template executed wrongly is worse than nothing because it creates false confidence.