Make-A-Will Month: the estate-planning gap in client books

InvestmentNews is using National Make-A-Will Month to flag a gap in client books. Only about a quarter of American adults have a will. Many who do have one have not reviewed it in years, and a marriage, a divorce, a new child, a relocation, or a sold business may have quietly made the plan obsolete.

InvestmentNews points to a misunderstanding that runs deeper. A will does not avoid probate; it instructs the court. Without a valid will, a client's estate falls under state intestacy laws, which rarely match the client's wishes. Even a well-drafted will goes through probate unless the plan uses trusts or other non-probate transfer tools.

That distinction splits the work. The federal estate tax exemption for an individual is $15 million in 2026. Married couples can shield twice that amount. Clients under that line are concerned with probate, privacy, and control. Several states set their own lower thresholds — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York among them — and for clients near the federal line or living in those states, the focus moves to tax efficiency and control across generations.

InvestmentNews stresses a specific point: a testamentary trust, created inside the will and activated only at death, can control distributions, but it does not avoid probate. The funded revocable trust is the workhorse for most clients — anyone who simply wants the estate out of court and out of the public record.

August gives advisors a low-pressure reason to raise a subject clients avoid. Every book has a client who signed a will decades ago and assumes it still protects the family, or who never revisited the plan after a divorce or a new child. The ask is simple: review the document, update what has changed, confirm it matches the current life. Most clients can handle that.