By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · July 2026

Estate Planning Intake Forms: What Every Attorney Should Ask

I had a client — a retired teacher, 72 years old, widowed, three adult children. She came in wanting a straightforward will. Leave everything equally to the three kids. Simple, right? Fifteen minutes. Except during the intake, when I asked about existing beneficiary designations on her retirement accounts, she paused. “I think my husband is still listed on those,” she said. Her husband had passed four years ago.

We pulled the IRA beneficiary forms. Her deceased husband was indeed the primary beneficiary on a $380,000 IRA. The contingent beneficiary was her eldest daughter — just one of the three children. If this client had died without updating those designations, the IRA would have passed to one child, regardless of what the will said. The will she was about to sign would have created the exact outcome she didn’t want: an unequal distribution that would have torn her family apart.

That moment — that one intake question about beneficiary designations — is why estate planning intake forms matter more than in almost any other area of law. The will is just one piece of the puzzle. The beneficiary designations, the titling of assets, the existing trusts, the powers of attorney — all of those operate independently of the will, and if they’re not coordinated, the client’s wishes don’t get fulfilled. Your intake form is where you catch those conflicts.

What Most Estate Planning Intake Forms Miss

The typical estate planning intake form I see from solo practitioners and small firms covers the basics: client demographics, spouse information, children’s names and ages, and a general question about assets. That’s fine for opening a file. It’s completely inadequate for planning an estate.

Estate planning is the one area of law where what the client doesn’t tell you is more dangerous than what they do tell you. A client doesn’t mention the timeshare in Cancun because they forgot about it. They don’t mention the life insurance policy from their first job because they think the $25,000 is too small to matter. They don’t mention that their youngest daughter has a disability that could disqualify her from government benefits if she inherits outright.

Your intake form needs to systematically ask about every category of asset, every existing designation, and every family circumstance that affects how the estate plan should be structured. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

The Complete Asset Inventory

Real Property

Don’t just ask “do you own real estate?” Break it down:

• Primary residence: address, approximate value, how title is held (joint tenancy, tenancy in common, tenancy by the entirety, trust, LLC), outstanding mortgage balance.
• Vacation/second homes: same details. Include out-of-state properties — these may require ancillary probate in another jurisdiction, which is a major planning consideration.
• Rental/investment properties: address, value, income generated, how titled, mortgage status.
• Vacant land, timeshares, mineral rights, water rights.
• Foreign real property. This changes the entire estate tax analysis and may trigger international reporting requirements.

The titling question is essential. If a property is held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, it passes outside the will. If it’s held as tenants in common, the deceased owner’s share goes through probate. Many clients don’t know how their property is titled. Your intake form should prompt them to check or bring a copy of the deed. For clients with significant real property holdings, a real estate intake form can help capture the property-specific details that feed into the estate plan.

Retirement Accounts and Pensions

This is where the beneficiary designation conflicts hide. Your form needs:

• Account type: 401(k), 403(b), traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP-IRA, SIMPLE IRA, pension, deferred compensation.
• Custodian/institution: where is the account held?
• Approximate value.
• Current primary and contingent beneficiary designations. This is the critical question. Ask the client to look these up and list them, or bring the most recent beneficiary designation forms.
• Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs): Is the client currently taking them? This matters for income planning and trust design.

The SECURE Act changed the rules for inherited retirement accounts. Non-spouse beneficiaries now generally have to withdraw the entire account within 10 years. This affects how you advise the client on trust-as-beneficiary planning. None of that analysis can happen if you don’t know what accounts exist and who the current beneficiaries are.

Life Insurance

Clients routinely forget about old life insurance policies, especially employer-provided group policies. Ask about:

• Individual policies: insurer, face amount, cash value (if whole/universal life), policy owner, insured, primary and contingent beneficiary, whether the policy is held in an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT).
• Employer group policies: these are often the ones with outdated beneficiary designations (ex-spouse, deceased parent).
• Annuities: type (fixed, variable, indexed), value, surrender charges, beneficiary designations.

Life insurance is the most common asset where the beneficiary designation is out of date. I’ve seen policies where the beneficiary was a first spouse from 20 years ago. The client had remarried, had children with the new spouse, and never updated the policy. Without the intake form prompting that specific question, it would have passed to the wrong person.

Business Interests

If the client owns a business, the estate planning implications are significant:

• Entity type: sole proprietorship, LLC, S-corp, C-corp, partnership, professional corporation.
• Ownership percentage.
• Buy-sell agreement: does one exist? Is it funded (with life insurance or otherwise)? What triggers a buyout?
• Succession plan: does the client want a family member to take over, or should the business be sold?
• Approximate value. Even a rough estimate helps frame the estate tax exposure.
• Operating agreement provisions on death or incapacity. These override the will on ownership transfer issues.

Financial Accounts

• Bank accounts: checking, savings, CDs, money market. Note joint accounts — these pass by operation of law to the surviving owner.
• Brokerage accounts: individual, joint, TOD (transfer on death) designations.
• Bonds: savings bonds, municipal bonds, corporate bonds.
• Cryptocurrency and digital assets. More on this below.

Digital Assets

This is the category most estate planning intake forms still don’t ask about, even though it’s increasingly material. Digital assets include:

• Online financial accounts: PayPal, Venmo, cryptocurrency wallets and exchange accounts (Coinbase, etc.).
• Online businesses: websites, domain names, online stores, ad revenue accounts, intellectual property hosted digitally.
• Social media and email accounts: not for their monetary value, but for access and legacy management. Who should have access? Should accounts be memorialized, deleted, or transferred?
• Digital media: purchased music, movies, e-books, software licenses. Many of these are non-transferable under the terms of service, but clients don’t know that.
• Password management: does the client use a password manager? Who has the master password? Is there a written list of critical accounts and credentials stored securely?

Your intake form should include a dedicated digital assets section. The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) governs fiduciary access to digital assets in most states, and your client’s estate plan should address it.

Family Dynamics That Change Everything

Blended Families

Second (or third) marriages with children from prior relationships are the most common source of estate planning conflict. Your intake form should ask:

• Is this the client’s first marriage? If not, are there children from a prior relationship?
• Does the current spouse have children from a prior relationship?
• Is there a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement? What does it say about inheritance rights?
• What is the client’s priority: providing for the surviving spouse or protecting the inheritance for children from a prior marriage? (This is the question that drives the trust design — QTIP trusts, credit shelter trusts, etc.)

The family law intake form covers divorce and custody matters, but the family dynamics section of an estate planning intake serves a different purpose: understanding the family relationships that determine who benefits, who might contest, and where conflicts are likely to arise.

Special Needs Beneficiaries

If any beneficiary receives or may receive government benefits (SSI, Medicaid), an outright inheritance can disqualify them from those benefits. Your intake form must ask:

• Does any beneficiary have a physical or intellectual disability?
• Does any beneficiary currently receive government benefits (SSI, SSDI, Medicaid, Section 8, SNAP)?
• Is there an existing special needs trust (SNT) for any beneficiary?
• Who is the current trustee, and is the client satisfied with that arrangement?

Missing this question is malpractice-level negligent. A $100,000 inheritance to a Medicaid recipient disqualifies them from benefits until the inheritance is spent down. A properly drafted special needs trust preserves both the inheritance and the benefits. Your intake form is the safety net that catches this before the will is drafted.

Disinherited or Estranged Family Members

Ask directly: is there anyone the client specifically wants to exclude from their estate? Is there a family member who might contest the will? This is sensitive, but it’s essential for drafting a plan that holds up. A client who wants to disinherit a child needs a plan that anticipates a will contest — in terrorem clauses, specific disinheritance language, documentation of the testamentary intent, and possibly a contemporaneous capacity evaluation.

Powers of Attorney and Healthcare Directives

Estate planning isn’t just about what happens when you die — it’s about what happens if you become incapacitated. Your intake form should cover:

• Financial Power of Attorney: who does the client want to manage their finances if they’re unable to? Primary and alternate agents.
• Healthcare Power of Attorney / Healthcare Proxy: who makes medical decisions?
• Living will / Advance directive preferences: does the client want life-sustaining treatment, artificial nutrition and hydration, organ donation?
• HIPAA authorization: who should have access to the client’s medical records?
• Existing documents: does the client already have POAs or healthcare directives? When were they signed? Are they still appropriate?

Existing Estate Planning Documents

Never assume you’re starting from scratch. Your intake form should ask about and request copies of:

• Prior wills and codicils
• Existing revocable or irrevocable trusts
• Prior powers of attorney (financial and healthcare)
• Advance directives / living wills
• Prenuptial or postnuptial agreements
• Buy-sell agreements
• Deeds (to verify titling)
• Prior gift tax returns (Form 709)

A client who has a 15-year-old revocable trust may need it updated, not replaced. A client who did estate planning in another state may need new documents that comply with the current state’s formalities. You can’t advise on any of this without seeing what already exists. For a comprehensive checklist, see our estate planning intake form checklist.

Charitable Giving and Legacy Intentions

Some clients have significant charitable intent that affects the estate plan structure:

• Does the client currently donate to charitable organizations?
• Do they want to leave a bequest to any charity or create a charitable trust?
• Would a charitable remainder trust (CRT) or charitable lead trust (CLT) serve their tax planning goals?
• Are they interested in a donor-advised fund or private foundation?

Charitable planning can significantly reduce estate tax exposure while fulfilling the client’s philanthropic goals. But you won’t know to explore these options unless the intake form asks about charitable intent.

Tax Considerations

For clients whose estates may approach or exceed the federal estate tax exemption (currently $13.61 million per individual as of 2024, but scheduled to sunset), your intake form needs additional data:

• Estimated total estate value (rough range is fine at intake)
• Prior taxable gifts and whether gift tax returns have been filed
• Generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax considerations — does the client want to leave assets to grandchildren?
• State estate or inheritance tax exposure (many states have much lower exemption thresholds than the federal level)
• Interest in lifetime gifting strategies to reduce the taxable estate

The Intake Form as a Client Relationship Tool

Beyond the legal substance, a thorough estate planning intake form serves a relationship purpose. When a client sits down and sees a form that asks about digital assets, special needs beneficiaries, blended family dynamics, and beneficiary designation conflicts, they know they’re working with an attorney who thinks about the details. It builds confidence that their plan will be comprehensive, not a cookie-cutter will.

Conversely, a flimsy intake form that asks for name, address, and “who do you want to get your stuff” signals a practice that cranks out documents without doing the underlying analysis. Clients talk to each other. The intake experience is part of the impression you make.

For more on how other areas of law structure their estate planning intake forms, including wills and trusts-specific approaches, we have a dedicated guide.

The Bottom Line

Estate planning intake is uniquely high-stakes because of the beneficiary designation problem. No other area of law has the same gap between what the client thinks their documents do and what actually happens to their assets. The will says “divide equally among my three children.” The IRA beneficiary designation says “everything to my eldest daughter.” The IRA designation wins. Every time.

Your estate planning intake form is your last chance to catch these conflicts before the plan is drafted and signed. Make it comprehensive. Make it systematic. Make it ask the questions the client wouldn’t think to volunteer. Because the stakes are too high — and the errors too permanent — to rely on a conversation and a handshake.

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