Your trust agreement is the most important document in your estate plan. It lets you:

• Decide who inherits your assets. Arizona law does not decide for you.
• Avoid probate. Assets in your trust pass to your heirs without a public, expensive and time-consuming Superior Court probate. Our typical fee for a simple uncontested Arizona probate is $5,000, and it takes about five months.
• Keep your estate private. Probate assets and the people who receive them become public court records. Trust assets do not.
• Name a trusted person to manage your assets if you lose mental capacity.
• Name a trustee to manage money left to minor children or to heirs who should not handle money.
• Disinherit one or more people.
• Protect a special needs heir. Our trust automatically creates a special needs trust for an heir who has special needs at your death or later in life, so the heir does not lose government benefits.
• Keep things simple. While you are alive, your revocable trust is generally treated as a grantor trust, and its income is ordinarily reported on your own income tax return.

Learn more: Revocable Living Trust 101: How It Works & Why You Need One, Arizona Revocable Living Trust Frequently Asked Questions and 18 Benefits of a Revocable Living Trust.

We give you a one-page picture of your plan that shows how your assets flow to the people you love. It is the easiest way to explain your plan to your family.

We give you optional trust language that rewards conduct you want to encourage and penalizes conduct you want to discourage. Review the optional provisions. To add any of them to your trust, copy the text and email it to Ricky Keyt at rck@keytlaw.com.

When a bank, title company or other business asks for a copy of your trust, give them your Certification of Trust instead. It proves your trust exists and shows who the trustee is and what the trustee can do, without revealing who inherits or what you own.

Why it matters: Your trust agreement is confidential. The certification lets you do business without handing strangers your private family information.

Learn more: Arizona Certification of Trust Keeps Your Estate Plan Private and Arizona Certification of Trust FAQs.

This wallet card shows the exact wording to use when you title an asset in the name of your trust. Show it to your banker when you move an account into the trust, and use it when you update pay-on-death beneficiary forms.

Your Last Will & Testament says that any asset still in your name when you die goes into your trust. We call it a pour-over will because it pours leftover assets into your trust.

Why it matters: It is a safety net. If you forget to transfer an asset to your trust, the will makes sure that asset still ends up with the heirs named in your trust. Learn more: Why Every Arizona Resident Needs a Will.

When appropriate, we prepare and record an Arizona beneficiary deed that names the trustee of your trust as the beneficiary of your home. You keep full ownership during your lifetime. At your death (or the death of the second spouse), the home passes to your trust without probate.

Learn more: Learn about Arizona Beneficiary Deeds.

This document transfers your personal belongings, such as jewelry, furniture, art and equipment, to your trust so they are covered by your plan.

Use this memorandum to leave specific items to specific people. For example, you can describe your ring and name who gets it. Items listed on the memorandum go directly to the person you name instead of into your trust.

Names the person or people who can manage your financial affairs if you lose the mental capacity to do it yourself, including paying bills, managing bank and investment accounts, filing taxes, buying or selling real estate, cashing checks and dealing with financial institutions.

Why it matters: Without one, your family may have to go to court to get a conservator appointed before anyone can pay your bills. Learn more: Why Not Having a Financial Power of Attorney Could Harm You.

Your health care power of attorney names the person or people who can make medical decisions for you if you are in a coma or otherwise cannot communicate with your doctors.

Learn more: Why Every Arizona Adult Needs a Healthcare Power of Attorney.

Federal privacy law, the HIPAA Privacy Rule, generally prohibits doctors and hospitals from sharing your medical information without your written permission. Your HIPAA authorization gives that permission to the people you choose.

Why it matters: Your healthcare agents cannot make good decisions if your doctors will not talk to them. Learn more: What Is a HIPAA Authorization & Why Every Arizona Adult Needs One.

Your living will states your wishes about life-sustaining treatment and end-of-life care if you cannot make or communicate your own decisions. You decide which treatments you want, which you do not want and when each choice applies.

Why it matters: It spares your family from guessing what you would want during the hardest moments of their lives. Learn more: Arizona Living Will: What It Is, Why You Need One, & What Happens Without It.

Your optional prehospital medical care directive, often called a DNR, tells EMTs and emergency room staff not to resuscitate you if your heart or breathing stops. You will still receive comfort care and pain relief.

Your binder includes an optional form you can complete if you want to donate organs after you die.

We buy you a five-year DocuBank membership and give DocuBank your healthcare power of attorney, living will and HIPAA authorization. You carry a DocuBank card in your wallet or purse. If you are hospitalized, the hospital can get these documents from DocuBank 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Your membership also lets you:

• List medical conditions, allergies and your emergency contact on your card.
• Store your medication list, doctors, vaccinations, surgeries and medical history online.
• Alert your emergency contacts when your card is used so they can get to your side.
• Store other private documents in an encrypted DocuBank SAFE with 2 GB of free storage, and share selected files with family members.

Names one or more people who can make medical decisions for your child if you and the other parent cannot be reached. If you are on a cruise and your child needs surgery, this document lets a trusted person say yes.

Tells the court who you want to raise your children if both parents die or become incapacitated.

Learn more: How to Name a Guardian of Minor Children in Arizona: A Complete Guide and Guardian of Arizona Minor Children FAQs.

If your long-term guardian lives far away, you can name someone nearby to care for your children until the long-term guardian arrives.

Why it matters: It keeps your children out of the care of child protective services while the guardian travels to them.

If there is anyone you never want raising your children, this document tells the Superior Court so.

Arizona law does not let minors manage their own assets. This document tells the court who you want to manage your children's money until they turn 18 if both parents die or become incapacitated.

An optional document where you tell your loved ones what you want after you die, such as cremation or burial, songs and scriptures for your service and the names of your pallbearers.

We give you the Arizona Department of Transportation form called Beneficiary Designation for Vehicle Car Title Transfer on Death. If you are the sole owner of an Arizona-titled vehicle, this form transfers the vehicle at your death to the person or people you name.

If you have pets, we give you two wallet cards that tell EMTs and hospital staff you have pets at home and whom to call to care for them.

Our optional online Arizona Estate Plan Questionnaire tells us about you, your family and your concerns so we can design a plan that fits. Complete it before your planning meeting, or we can collect the information during the meeting.

After you hire us, we email you a link to our online Asset Inventory. List your bank and investment accounts, real estate, LLCs, vehicles and other valuable assets, and the system creates a downloadable Excel spreadsheet you can update as your assets change. Your spreadsheet becomes:

• Your checklist of assets to transfer to your trust.
• Our checklist if you hire us to make the transfers.
• A map for your loved ones of what you own and where to find it.

Why it matters: If no one knows an asset exists, your family cannot claim it.

Our 22-page guide explains how to transfer each type of asset to your trust, including cash and investment accounts, stock and stock options, bonds, personal effects, retirement plans and pensions, insurance, annuities, money owed to you, real estate, jointly owned assets and timeshares.

Why it matters: Assets you do not transfer to your trust may have to go through probate. Learn more: How to Move Real Estate, LLCs, Investment and Bank Accounts into Your Trust: The Ultimate Guide.

A list of the tasks your loved ones should complete if you die or become incapacitated.

A one-page summary of everyone you named in your plan: your successor trustees, your financial and healthcare agents, your HIPAA agents and the personal representative of your estate. Review it from time to time to decide whether anyone should change.

Our manual explains the legal duties of the person who will manage your trust if you die or become incapacitated. Give it to your successor trustee, who has fiduciary duties to your beneficiaries and needs to know them.

A copy of the estate planning book written by Richard Keyt and his son Richard C. Keyt.

All of your signed estate plan documents, organized behind tabs in one binder.

A thumb drive with PDF copies of every signed, witnessed and notarized document, so you can easily share copies with the people who need them.

We make changes to your documents at no charge during the first 90 days after you sign them.

After you sign, we send you a series of emails that walk you through what to do next, including how to fund your trust.

Every six months we send you an email and a text message reminding you to review your plan and your Confirmation of Names. Life changes, and your plan should keep up.