What Could Your Estate Plan Look Like?
Answer a few questions about your family and what you own. The map below shows the documents a Florida plan like yours usually includes and where each asset actually goes, then shows the same picture with no plan at all.
Quick answer: Most Florida families end up with a revocable living trust at the center, a pour-over will as the safety net, a durable power of attorney and health care documents for life, and beneficiary forms that match. What changes from family to family is the branches: guardians and a minor's trust for young children, two trusts instead of one for a blended family, a supplemental needs trust for a beneficiary on benefits, and business and out-of-state pieces where they apply. The map builds those branches for you.
Click any box in the map for a plain-English note on what it does and why it is there.
This map shows what an estate plan for a household like yours usually includes and how assets typically pass. It is general information, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a conversation about your actual family and assets. Nothing you enter here is sent to us or stored anywhere except your own browser.
How to read the map
The top layer is the paper: the documents a plan like yours usually includes. The bottom layer is the part most people never see drawn out: where each thing you own actually goes when you die, and by which route. There are only three routes. An asset titled in your trust passes under the trust's instructions, privately and without a court. An asset with a beneficiary designation passes to whoever is named on the form, whatever your will or trust says. Anything left in your own name with no designation goes through probate, which is a public court process that takes months at best.
Switch the view to "With no plan at all" and the same assets are routed the way Florida routes them when there are no instructions. A married person with children from a prior relationship, for example, does not leave everything to the spouse; the estate splits. A minor child cannot receive an inheritance directly, so the court appoints someone to hold it. And a home left to a spouse and a minor child together is governed by rules that no will can change.
Why the trust is at the center of most of these maps
For most Florida families the revocable living trust does the real work. It holds the house and the accounts, it names who is in charge if you are incapacitated, and it says exactly how and when each person receives their share: outright to a responsible adult, held and managed for a child until an age you choose, or kept in a supplemental needs trust so a disabled beneficiary does not lose public benefits. The will that goes with it is a safety net. It catches anything you forgot to move into the trust, and it is where parents of minor children name a guardian.
The trust only works for what it owns, which is why the map ends with a link to the funding checklist. A trust that was signed and never funded is the most common estate planning failure we see, and it is the reason the after-the-first-lawyer work on this site exists.
What this map cannot tell you
It does not know how much anything is worth, whether your operating agreement allows a transfer, whether your spouse has signed a waiver, or whether your second home is in a state that will need its own court process. Those are the questions a first meeting answers. Bring the map, and we will start from it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this map legal advice?
No. It shows the documents and asset routes that a plan for a household like yours usually involves, based on the answers you give. It does not know your assets' values, your documents' actual terms, or your family's history. Use it to understand the shape of a plan and to make the first meeting more productive.
Do I really need a trust, or is a will enough?
A will alone means probate for everything in your name. For a Florida homeowner, anyone with property in another state, a business owner, or a parent of minor children, a revocable trust usually saves the family more time and money than it costs, and it is the only way to control how and when a child or a vulnerable beneficiary receives money. For a very simple estate a will-based plan can be right, and we will say so.
What happens to my house if I die without a plan and I have a spouse and kids?
Florida's homestead rules take over. The surviving spouse receives the right to live in the home for life and the children receive it afterward, unless the spouse elects to take a half interest instead. If any child is a minor, the home cannot be left any other way, even by a will.
Why does the map say not to put my IRA in the trust?
Moving a retirement account into a trust during your life is treated as a withdrawal and taxed. Retirement accounts pass by beneficiary designation instead. The trust can be named as a beneficiary when that is the right result, for a minor or special-needs beneficiary for example, but the trust has to be drafted for it.
Does Scheer Legal build the plan the map shows?
Yes. Estate plans are flat fee, quoted in writing after an initial consultation, and every trust engagement includes the funding work: the deed, the retitling instructions, and the beneficiary designations. Bring your map to the first meeting and we start from there.
Bring the map to a first conversation.
Estate plans are flat fee, quoted in writing after an initial consultation that is free for estate planning matters. English or Spanish.
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