A parent can write a will splitting everything evenly between two kids and still end up leaving an entire retirement account to just one of them. LegacyGuard Estate Planning is calling attention to why: beneficiary designations, jointly owned property, transfer-on-death accounts and trust assets can all move outside the will entirely, sometimes contradicting it completely.

The problem is that a will feels like the document that should have the final say. In practice, it usually only governs what passes through the probate estate. A 401(k), IRA or life insurance policy with a named beneficiary transfers directly to that person, no matter what the will says elsewhere. Samantha Halvorson, CEO of LegacyGuard Estate Planning, put it simply: people tell her they already handled things because they have a will, but once you look at how the accounts and property are actually titled, the will turns out to be just one instruction among several, not the final word.

Think about how this plays out in real life. Someone names their first child as an IRA beneficiary, has a second child years later, and eventually sets up a trust that calls for splitting things equally. If that beneficiary form never gets updated, the account still goes entirely to the first child, no matter what the trust says.

Property ownership adds another wrinkle. Jointly owned property can pass straight to a surviving owner. Payable-on-death bank accounts and transfer-on-death registrations send assets directly to whoever is named, bypassing the will completely. Each of these tools can work exactly as designed on its own, while together they can produce an outcome nobody actually intended.

Trusts have their own version of this trap. A revocable living trust can spell out detailed wishes and help assets skip probate, but only if property is actually retitled into the trust's name. A house, a brokerage account, a bank account meant to be covered by the trust can sit outside it if the paperwork was never updated. That's why funding a trust matters as much as writing one. A carefully drafted trust that doesn't actually own the assets it's supposed to control offers a lot less protection than its creator thinks.

This gap tends to widen over time. Retirement accounts get rolled over, insurance policies get swapped, homes get bought and sold, brokerage accounts change hands, and families go through marriages, divorces and new kids. A plan can stay legally valid while the financial picture it was built around drifts further and further from reality.

It's not just an issue for people with complicated finances either. A 2026 survey by Trust & Will of 5,000 U.S. adults found 26% had wills, 14% had trusts, and 56% had none of the five estate planning documents tracked. Even for the households that have done the work, keeping the paperwork and the actual assets in agreement is the harder, ongoing part.

What I'd tell a client about this

Having a will or a trust is not the finish line. It's the starting point. The real work is making sure every account, every deed, every beneficiary form actually lines up with what that document says. I've talked with clients who were confident their estate plan was airtight, only to discover an old 401(k) beneficiary form from a previous job that quietly overruled everything else. The lesson is simple: your estate plan is only as strong as its least updated piece of paperwork.

One thing to do this week

Pull up the beneficiary designations on your retirement accounts and life insurance policies and check the names against what your will or trust actually says. Fidelity recommends reviewing these every three to five years, and especially after a marriage, divorce, birth or death. If it's been a while since you looked, this week is a good time to start.

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