5 Things to Do Now to Make Your Estate Simpler for Your Heirs

No one likes to think about their own demise, but planning can make life after your death significantly easier for heirs.

Here are five ways to help heirs avoid extra time, money, stress and acrimony after you pass:

Keep documents updated

Having a will or living trust is essential—but it isn’t enough. The proper documents need to be updated periodically, especially as life circumstances change.

Amber Hughes , a lawyer in the Phoenix office of law firm Dickinson Wright, offers the example of a mother who belatedly drafted new estate-planning documents but died before signing them. The old will had named as heirs stepchildren she hadn’t spoken to in 20 years, and her sons are spending tens of thousands of dollars to have the unsigned will enforced by a judge.

Many people also fail to update beneficiaries for life insurance, retirement accounts and bank or investment accounts. These assets pass according to the beneficiary designation, if there is one, regardless of what the will or living trust says, says Laura Zwicker , chair of the private client services group at law firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger in Los Angeles.

A client’s brother had an IRA valued at several million dollars. When he died, the IRA funds went to a woman he hadn’t dated for at least 10 years instead of to his brother’s daughters, even though they were named as beneficiaries in his trust. The heir indicated on the IRA was the former girlfriend, and that was the one that counted. “Imagine their surprise, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” Zwicker says.

Address digital assets

Many people have digital assets, including email and online photos, that could be lost to heirs if proper provisions aren’t put in place. For instance, a writer who stores plays or novels on a Google drive, but doesn’t set up a Google inactive-account profile, may make it harder or impossible for heirs to gain access to these works. Terms might differ, so having appropriate documentation on file with each provider is important.

Cryptocurrency and non fungible tokens can also easily be lost if their owners don’t provide heirs a way to access these assets. So people should make sure beneficiaries know how to access an account’s private keys—the secret numbers used to access cryptocurrency—as well as the kind of wallet and crypto type. One caveat: Those private keys and other sensitive information shouldn’t be included in a will because it becomes public through the probate process and that puts the assets at risk.

Assign personal property in advance

Many people assume that heirs will figure out on their own how to divide personal property, but that can lead to fights.

Hughes offers the example of three sisters who fought over their mother’s collection of hundreds of porcelain dolls. They had to hire a professional mediator to draw straws until all of the dolls were distributed. Had the mother made a personal-property list before she died, significant aggravation and hostility might have been avoided. The list can be handwritten and up-to-date, and should be kept with estate-plan documents. The document should also include where items can be found.

Leave good notes

Estate-planning experts advise that people set aside a folder with important information for the heirs, such as names, numbers and locations of accounts, as well as names and contact information for attorneys, accountants and financial advisers. This is especially important since bills are often paid online, eliminating once-helpful paper statements. Also let heirs know where to find your estate-planning documents. “If you can’t find the will and you don’t know who the trust and estate attorney is, that’s a horrible situation,” says Seth Slotkin at law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in New York.

One word of caution: Try not to leave unnecessary documents for your heirs, because it’s overwhelming, Slotkin says. How long to keep certain documents depends on their nature, but generally speaking, purging unnecessary documents will save your heirs time and money, he says.

Strive for conflict-avoidance

Parents sometimes create conflict by choosing one child over another to serve as executor, trustee or both, says Neil Solarz , shareholder at Weinstock Manion in Los Angeles.

Sometimes it may be appropriate. But in most instances, Solarz recommends naming a relative or friend to avoid potential sibling-rivalry issues. If there’s no one else available, people might consider hiring a trust company or a private professional fiduciary—vetted and licensed individuals who are licensed to act as trustees or executors.

People who have specific reasons for dividing assets or roles unevenly should prepare a letter that explains their thought process, which can help mitigate the potential for future conflicts, Slotkin says. For example, clarify that you named your daughter as executor because she lives locally, but that you want all of your children to work together to settle the estate, he says. Or, if you are leaving the younger of three children $100,000 more than the others, explain why. This extra step can mean the difference between harmony and acrimony among your heirs, he says.

“The thing that’s most likely to cause the estate process to dissolve into something horrible is acrimony among the children,” Slotkin says. “If you want to make things easy for your kids, if there’s anything that could be misinterpreted, explain it to them so they’re not fighting about it.”

There has rarely, if ever, been so much tech talent available in the job market. Yet many tech companies say good help is hard to find.

What gives?

U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer-science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022, according to federal data. Then came round after round of layoffs at Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts businesses will employ 6% fewer computer programmers in 2034 than they did last year.

All of this should, in theory, mean there is an ample supply of eager, capable engineers ready for hire.

But in their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year .

Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.

Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.

Playing a different game

It is difficult to define what makes an AI all-star, but I’m sorry to report that it’s probably not whatever you’re doing.

Maybe you’re learning how to work more efficiently with the aid of ChatGPT and its robotic brethren. Perhaps you’re taking one of those innumerable AI certificate courses.

You might as well be playing pickup basketball at your local YMCA in hopes of being signed by the Los Angeles Lakers. The AI minds that companies truly covet are almost as rare as professional athletes.

“We’re talking about hundreds of people in the world, at the most,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive of Runway, which makes AI image and video tools.

He describes it like this: Picture an AI model as a machine with 1,000 dials. The goal is to train the machine to detect patterns and predict outcomes. To do this, you have to feed it reams of data and know which dials to adjust—and by how much.

The universe of people with the right touch is confined to those with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts or the foresight (possibly luck) to go into AI many years ago, before it was all the rage.

As a venture-backed startup with about 120 employees, Runway doesn’t necessarily vie with Silicon Valley giants for the AI job market’s version of LeBron James. But when I spoke with Valenzuela recently, his company was advertising base salaries of up to $440,000 for an engineering manager and $490,000 for a director of machine learning.

A job listing like one of these might attract 2,000 applicants in a week, Valenzuela says, and there is a decent chance he won’t pick any of them. A lot of people who claim to be AI literate merely produce “workslop”—generic, low-quality material. He spends a lot of time reading academic journals and browsing GitHub portfolios, and recruiting people whose work impresses him.

In addition to an uncommon skill set, companies trying to win in the hypercompetitive AI arena are scouting for commitment bordering on fanaticism .

Daniel Park is seeking three new members for his nine-person startup. He says he will wait a year or longer if that’s what it takes to fill roles with advertised base salaries of up to $500,000.

He’s looking for “prodigies” willing to work seven days a week. Much of the team lives together in a six-bedroom house in San Francisco.

If this sounds like a lonely existence, Park’s team members may be able to solve their own problem. His company, Pickle, aims to develop personalised AI companions akin to Tony Stark’s Jarvis in “Iron Man.”

Overlooked

James Strawn wasn’t an AI early adopter, and the father of two teenagers doesn’t want to sacrifice his personal life for a job. He is beginning to wonder whether there is still a place for people like him in the tech sector.

He was laid off over the summer after 25 years at Adobe , where he was a senior software quality-assurance engineer. Strawn, 55, started as a contractor and recalls his hiring as a leap of faith by the company.

He had been an artist and graphic designer. The managers who interviewed him figured he could use that background to help make Illustrator and other Adobe software more user-friendly.

Looking for work now, he doesn’t see the same willingness by companies to take a chance on someone whose résumé isn’t a perfect match to the job description. He’s had one interview since his layoff.

“I always thought my years of experience at a high-profile company would at least be enough to get me interviews where I could explain how I could contribute,” says Strawn, who is taking foundational AI courses. “It’s just not like that.”

The trouble for people starting out in AI—whether recent grads or job switchers like Strawn—is that companies see them as a dime a dozen.

“There’s this AI arms race, and the fact of the matter is entry-level people aren’t going to help you win it,” says Matt Massucci, CEO of the tech recruiting firm Hirewell. “There’s this concept of the 10x engineer—the one engineer who can do the work of 10. That’s what companies are really leaning into and paying for.”

He adds that companies can automate some low-level engineering tasks, which frees up more money to throw at high-end talent.

It’s a dynamic that creates a few handsomely paid haves and a lot more have-nots.