What to Do After You Sign Your Estate Plan

Make sure at least one person knows this exists. Not a lawyer's copy, not a scanned PDF nobody's opened — one person who knows a plan exists, where the physical originals are, and where the organized version of everything lives. If something happened to you tomorrow, that one person is the difference between your family finding what they need and starting a scavenger hunt. In The Folder, this looks like giving that person a key — access scoped to exactly what they need. You can share just your documents, for example, without opening up your full list of accounts. It's not all-or-nothing, and you can change or revoke it anytime.

Both matter, and they're not the same thing. A fireproof safe or safe deposit box protects the physical documents. But protection doesn't help your family if nobody knows the safe exists or how to open it. The move is to do both: keep the originals somewhere secure, and make sure someone else knows where that is — plus where the organized, digital version lives, if you're keeping one.

Realistically, both, and neither has to happen all at once. Trust funding is the more urgent of the two if you created a revocable living trust — your home, accounts, and other assets need to be retitled in the trust's name to actually work the way you expect. It's also the step most people get stuck on, since every institution handles it differently. Building out a place your family can turn to — accounts, key contacts, the basics your family would need on a bad day — can happen more slowly. In The Folder, this is designed to be done a little at a time. None of it has to happen in one sitting. Steady progress beats a perfect binder that never gets finished.

Go account by account. For anything meant to be in the trust — your home, bank accounts, investment accounts, business interests — check how the title reads. If it still shows your name alone rather than "[Your Name], Trustee of the [Your Name] Trust," it likely hasn't been moved in yet. This step trips up more people than almost anything else in estate planning. It gets a full walkthrough of its own.

Yes, separately. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death accounts pass by beneficiary form, not by your will or trust. If those forms still list an ex-spouse, or haven't been touched in years, your new documents won't override them. This is a quick check with each institution — worth doing in the same pass as confirming your trust funding.

Some changes are worth a real, legal review — not just an update to your notes. None of these require starting over. Most are a conversation with your attorney and a targeted amendment.

• Marriage, divorce, or a new partner
• A new child or grandchild
• Buying or selling a home
• Moving to a different state
• A significant change in assets, income, or a business
• The death of someone named in your plan, or a change in who you'd choose as personal representative or trustee

Yes, and it's a useful distinction. A legal review is about your actual documents — it happens when something above changes, and it needs your attorney. A practical review is lighter: a regular check that the information about your plan is still accurate. This can happen more often, doesn't need a lawyer to run it, and its whole job is to catch things early. The Folder is built around this second kind: a short annual check-in surfaces what's changed, and if something needs your attorney's attention, they're notified automatically.

For anything that changes who gets what, who's in charge, or how an asset is titled — that's attorney territory. This article covers common, general practices; it isn't legal advice for your specific documents or state. For anything specific to your plan, your estate planning attorney is the right call.