A few months ago, a woman sat across from us at our San Antonio office, holding a manila folder stuffed with papers her father had left behind. Some were outdated. Some were incomplete. One was never signed. She wasn’t sad, exactly — she was frustrated. “I thought he had this handled,” she said. That folder is the reason this checklist exists.
Most people think estate planning is one document. It isn’t. It’s a set of pieces that work together, and if even one is missing or out of date, the rest can fall apart when your family needs them most. So let’s walk through the documents that actually matter, in plain language, the way we’d explain it to a friend over coffee rather than a law school lecture.
1. Last Will and Testament
This is the document most people have heard of, and for good reason — it’s the foundation. Your will says who gets what, names guardians for minor children, and appoints an executor to carry out your wishes. Without one, Texas law decides for you, and that rarely lines up with what a family actually wants. A properly drafted estate plan starts here, but it shouldn’t end here.
2. Revocable Living Trust
A trust isn’t just for wealthy families — that’s one of the biggest myths we hear in consultations. A revocable living trust lets your assets pass to loved ones without going through court, keeps your affairs private, and gives you control while you’re alive and well. For many San Antonio families, this single document saves months of delay and thousands in unnecessary costs down the road.
3. Durable Power of Attorney
If you were suddenly unable to manage your own finances — even temporarily — who would pay your bills, manage your accounts, or handle your business affairs? A durable power of attorney names that person before it’s ever needed. It’s one of the quieter documents in a plan, but it’s often the one families are grateful for first, because incapacity tends to arrive without warning.
4. Medical Power of Attorney
Separate from your financial affairs, a medical power of attorney names someone to make healthcare decisions on your behalf if you can’t speak for yourself. This isn’t a conversation anyone loves having, but it’s one of the kindest things you can do for your family — it removes the guesswork during an already painful moment.
5. HIPAA Authorization
Here’s one people forget entirely. Even with a medical power of attorney in place, doctors and hospitals are bound by privacy law and may not release your medical information to family without a separate HIPAA release. We’ve seen spouses and adult children turned away at hospital front desks simply because this one-page form was missing. It’s small, but it matters.
6. Directive to Physicians (Living Will)
A living will spells out your wishes about life-sustaining treatment if you’re terminally ill or permanently unconscious. It takes the burden off your loved ones so they aren’t left guessing — or arguing — about what you would have wanted. Families who’ve been through this without guidance often describe it as one of the hardest weeks of their lives, which is exactly why we build incapacity planning into every plan we create.
7. Beneficiary Designations
Your will doesn’t control everything. Life insurance policies, retirement accounts, and certain bank accounts pass according to their beneficiary designations, regardless of what your will says. We regularly meet people whose plans were technically “done,” but their 401(k) still listed an ex-spouse or a beneficiary who passed away years earlier. Reviewing these regularly is just as important as drafting the documents themselves.
8. Declaration of Guardian
If you have minor children, or if you want a say in who would care for you personally should you become incapacitated, this document names your choice. Without it, a judge decides — and that decision may not reflect what you would have wanted for your children or yourself. It’s a short document, but the peace of mind it provides is significant.
9. Business Succession or Buy-Sell Documents
If you own a business, your estate plan isn’t complete without addressing what happens to it. A buy-sell agreement or succession plan protects your partners, your employees, and your family from the chaos that can follow an owner’s sudden death or incapacity. This is an area we work through closely with clients as part of business succession planning, because a business without a plan can unravel fast, even a healthy one.
10. Letter of Intent (Personal Instructions)
This one isn’t legally binding, but it might be the most personal document on this list. A letter of intent explains your reasoning, your wishes for personal belongings, funeral preferences, or messages to loved ones. It won’t hold up in court, but it often means the most to the people reading it.
Why the Checklist Alone Isn’t Enough
Having all ten documents is a great start, but paperwork isn’t the same as a plan. We’ve reviewed plans that had every form imaginable, yet the trust was never funded, the beneficiary forms hadn’t been touched in a decade, or the named guardian had since passed away. Life changes — marriages, births, moves, new businesses, new laws — and your documents need to change with it. That’s really the difference between a plan that protects your family and one that only looks like it does.
If a loved one has already passed and you’re the one holding the folder full of old paperwork, that’s a different situation entirely, and it deserves its own kind of guidance through probate and estate administration. You shouldn’t have to untangle that alone.
We built Skeen Law around the idea that estate planning shouldn’t feel like a legal chore you avoid until it’s too late. It should feel like clarity — for you, and for the people you love most. Every family we work with in San Antonio and the surrounding Hill Country gets a plan shaped around their actual life, not a generic template pulled off a shelf.
We also know documents get stale. A plan built five years ago may no longer reflect your family, your assets, or your wishes, which is why we offer ongoing estate plan maintenance rather than a one-and-done signing appointment.
If you’ve read this far, you probably already suspect your own paperwork has a gap somewhere — maybe a beneficiary form you haven’t looked at in years, or a guardian designation that was never finalized. That instinct is usually right, and it’s worth trusting. You can read what other families have experienced working with us on our client experiences page, or browse a few common questions on our FAQ page if you’re still sorting out where to start.
The folder that started this article didn’t need to be so complicated. A little guidance early on would have saved that family weeks of stress during an already hard time. If you’d rather build your plan with someone sitting across the table instead of piecing it together alone, we’d be glad to walk through it with you — start that conversation here.