Why Your Will May Not Control Where All Your Assets Go

COLUMBUS, Ohio, USA — September 28, 2026 — Plenty of people spend years assuming their will is the final word on who gets their money.

Then there is the beneficiary form they filled out through work years earlier.

A parent might write a will leaving everything equally to two children, while an old retirement account still names only one of them. A homeowner might say in a will that a property should go to the children, even though the way the property is titled could send it somewhere else. Someone may create a living trust to avoid probate, then leave major assets outside the trust.

Each document can be valid. The results can still be very different from what the person expected.

That is one of the less obvious problems in estate planning. A will can be important, but it does not necessarily control every asset a person owns.

"People will tell us, 'I already handled this. I have a will,'" said Samantha Halvorson, chief executive of LegacyGuard Estate Planning. "Then you start looking at how their accounts and property are actually set up, and the will may be only one set of instructions."

The issue affects a large number of households.

A 2026 national survey of 5,000 U.S. adults by Trust & Will found that wills remain the most common estate planning document, held by 26% of respondents. Trust ownership stood at 14%. More broadly, 56% of respondents had none of the five estate planning documents tracked in the survey, even though 73% said estate planning was personally important to them.

For people who have taken the first step, the harder question may be what their estate planning documents actually control.

Beneficiary designations are one place where expectations can collide with reality.

A 401(k), IRA, life insurance policy or other account can allow its owner to name a beneficiary directly. In many cases, that beneficiary designation controls where the asset goes when the owner passes, regardless of what the will says.

Fidelity notes that beneficiaries named on a 401(k) generally inherit the account even when a will names someone else. It also advises that beneficiary designations should be coordinated with the rest of an estate plan because those instructions can supersede provisions in a will or trust.

The American Bar Association makes the same distinction. Assets that transfer through a beneficiary designation are generally nonprobate assets and pass outside the terms of a will. It gives the example of someone who wants to divide an estate equally among three children but has a life insurance policy naming only one child. Without additional planning, the result may not match the broader intention.

That can turn a form completed years earlier into one of the most consequential documents in an estate.

"You can have a beautifully written will that says exactly what you want," Halvorson said. "But if a major retirement account still points somewhere else, the family may discover that the plan they thought they had and the plan that actually exists are not the same."

The same issue can surface with property ownership.

Certain jointly owned assets can pass directly to the surviving owner. Transfer on death registrations can allow eligible securities to move directly to a named beneficiary without going through probate. Payable on death arrangements can do something similar for certain bank accounts.

The Securities and Exchange Commission says a transfer on death registration can allow securities to pass directly to another person or entity without probate.

That helps explain why simply having a will does not mean an estate will avoid probate.

A will generally directs property that becomes part of the probate estate. Other assets may pass outside probate because of how they are titled, because a beneficiary has been named or because they are held in a trust.

Living trusts add another layer.

Interest in trusts appears to be increasing. Trust & Will's 2026 survey found that trust ownership rose from 11% in 2025 to 14% in 2026, while will ownership fell from 31% to 26%.

A revocable living trust can hold assets and provide instructions for how those assets should be managed and distributed. When assets are properly transferred into the trust, they can generally be administered outside the probate process.

But creating the trust is not the same as funding it.

If a house, bank account or investment account was supposed to be part of a living trust but was never properly transferred, the existence of the trust alone may not produce the result the owner expected.

That makes the familiar will versus trust debate less useful than it first appears.

The real estate planning question is not always which document is better. It is whether the will, living trust, beneficiary designations, property titles and account registrations all point in the same direction.

That becomes harder over time.

Families change. People marry, divorce and remarry. Children are born. Homes are purchased. Retirement accounts are rolled into new accounts. Life insurance policies are replaced. Brokerage accounts move from one institution to another.

An estate plan created at age 45 can still be sitting in a drawer at 65 while almost everything around it has changed.

Fidelity recommends reviewing estate planning documents every three to five years and paying particular attention to beneficiary designations and how assets are titled. Its 2026 guidance gives a simple example. A parent names a first child as the beneficiary of an IRA, then later has a second child but never changes the account. Even if a revocable trust says the IRA should be divided equally, the beneficiary designation may still send the account to the first child.

The financial consequences can be substantial.

For many households, retirement accounts and a home represent a large share of everything they own. An outdated beneficiary designation on a six figure retirement account is not a small clerical mistake. It can change an inheritance.

The same is true when families are trying to avoid probate. One account may transfer directly to a beneficiary. Another may be held in a living trust. A jointly owned property may pass to the surviving owner. An asset left outside all of those arrangements may still end up in probate court.

That means an estate can follow several different paths at once.

LegacyGuard Estate Planning, which works with a nationwide network of attorneys, has increasingly focused on that coordination problem, Halvorson said.

She said families often begin the estate planning process by asking which documents they need. A more useful conversation can come later, when every asset is considered alongside those documents.

"Estate planning is not just collecting paperwork," Halvorson said. "You are trying to make sure your house, your accounts, your beneficiaries and your legal documents all tell the same story."

That can make an estate plan review considerably broader than reviewing a will.

It may include checking a 401(k) beneficiary, IRA beneficiary, life insurance beneficiary, payable on death account, transfer on death registration, property ownership and trust funding. It can also mean asking whether major life changes have made an old plan less accurate than it once was.

None of that makes the will unimportant.

It changes the question.

For families trying to understand what will happen to their property, the question is no longer simply whether an estate plan exists.

It is whether all of the pieces say the same thing.

(LegacyGuard Estate Planning operates a nationwide firm connecting families across all 50 states with independent, licensed attorneys who prepare personalized living trusts. The company combines technology, education, and legal expertise to make estate planning accessible and affordable for everyday American families. More information is available at https://LegacyGuardEP.com.)

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Website: https://LegacyGuardEP.com

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