How to Store & Share Your
Arizona Estate Plan
Richard Keyt (Rick, the father at 480-664-7478) and his son, former CPA Richard C. Keyt (Ricky at 480-664-7472), are Arizona estate planning attorneys with 294 5-star Google reviews and 407 5-star Google, Facebook & Birdeye reviews. They want to prepare a custom estate plan for Arizona residents that protects their most valuable assets – their loved ones. Call, email, or book a free office, phone or Zoom video meeting.
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Who Should Receive Copies of Your Arizona Estate Plan Documents and Where to Store Your Binder
Congratulations. You just signed your estate plan documents. You now have a revocable living trust, a pour-over will, a healthcare power of attorney, a financial power of attorney, a living will, a HIPAA authorization, and—if you have minor children—a guardian nomination document. That is a complete set of documents that will protect you, your family, and your assets for the rest of your life.
But here is something most people do not think about on signing day: your estate plan only works if the right people have access to the right documents at the right time. A perfectly drafted trust sitting in the wrong place—or known only to you—can leave your family scrambling in a crisis. I have seen it happen.
In this article, I will walk you through exactly who should receive copies of your estate plan documents, what each person should receive, and where you should store your original binder. Follow these steps and your estate plan will be ready to do its job when your family needs it most.
The Two Big Goals: Access and Privacy
Before we talk about who gets copies, understand the two competing goals at play here. On one hand, you want the right people to have access to your documents in an emergency—whether that is a sudden illness, an accident, or your death. On the other hand, your estate plan is deeply personal. It reveals what you own, how you have structured your affairs, and who gets what when you die. You do not need to share that level of detail with the entire world.
The solution is to be strategic. Certain people need complete copies of specific documents. Others need only a summary or a specific page. I will explain the difference as we go through each document.
Your Revocable Living Trust
Your Successor Trustees
Your successor trustee is the person—or people—who will manage your trust assets if you become incapacitated and after you die. This person needs a complete copy of your revocable living trust. They do not need to memorize every word, but they should read it and understand their role before they ever have to act on it. The worst time for your successor trustee to read your trust for the first time is at 2:00 a.m. in a hospital waiting room.
Sit down with your successor trustee, give them their copy, and walk through the highlights: what the trust owns, what their powers are, what you want done with your assets, and how you want distributions handled. If you have named co-trustees, they each need a copy.
Your Financial Institutions: Give Them a Certification of Trust, Not the Full Trust
When you fund your trust—which means re-titling your financial accounts, real estate, and other assets into the name of your trust—your bank, brokerage firm, and other financial institutions will ask for proof that your trust exists and that you have authority to act as trustee. You do not have to hand them your entire trust document. Doing so exposes private information about your beneficiaries and your estate plan that has nothing to do with the bank's legitimate need.
Instead, give them a Certification of Trust (also called an Affidavit of Trust). This is a short summary document, typically two to four pages, that confirms the trust exists, identifies the trustees, and describes the trustees' powers. Arizona law specifically authorizes financial institutions to rely on a Certification of Trust under A.R.S. § 14-11013. Most Arizona banks and brokerage firms accept it without question.
Keep several executed copies of your Certification of Trust in your binder so you have them ready when you need them.
Your Healthcare Power of Attorney and Living Will
Your Healthcare Agent
Your healthcare power of attorney names a healthcare agent—the person who will make medical decisions for you when you cannot make them yourself. That person must have a copy of the document. They cannot show up at a hospital and tell the nurses they are your agent without being able to prove it. Give your primary healthcare agent a copy and, if you have a backup agent, give them a copy as well.
Along with the healthcare power of attorney, give your healthcare agent a copy of your Living Will (also called an Advance Healthcare Directive). Your living will tells your doctors—and your healthcare agent—what kind of life-sustaining treatment you want or do not want if you are in a terminal condition or a persistent vegetative state. Your agent will need this document to carry out your wishes.
Your Primary Care Physician
Give your primary care doctor a copy of both your healthcare power of attorney and your living will and ask that they be placed in your permanent medical file. If you are admitted to a hospital, the hospital will often have its own advance directive forms, but having your documents already in your medical record ensures your wishes are known even before you are asked.
Hospitals, Urgent Care Centers, and Specialists
When you are admitted to any medical facility, bring copies of your healthcare power of attorney and living will with you. Many hospitals maintain an electronic registry of advance directives. Ask the admitting staff whether they can scan and store your documents in their system.
Keep several extra copies of both documents in your binder for this purpose. These are the two documents most likely to be requested in an emergency situation.
Your Financial Power of Attorney
Your Financial Agent
Your durable financial power of attorney names a financial agent who can manage your financial affairs—pay your bills, manage your bank accounts, file your taxes, and handle other financial matters—if you become incapacitated. Your financial agent should have a copy of this document. If they need to step in while you are incapacitated, they cannot act without it.
One important note: your financial power of attorney covers assets that are outside your trust—things like IRA accounts, 401(k) plans, and any assets you forgot to transfer into the trust. Your successor trustee handles assets inside the trust. In some cases, the same person serves both roles. Whether that is true for you or not, make sure your financial agent has their copy.
Your Banks and Financial Institutions
You can also give your bank a copy of your financial power of attorney in advance. Many banks have their own proprietary power of attorney forms they prefer, but under Arizona law, a properly executed durable power of attorney must be honored. Registering it with your bank ahead of time—before you need it—can save your agent significant frustration later.
Your Pour-Over Will
Your pour-over will is a backup document. It works in tandem with your trust to capture any assets that were not transferred into your trust during your lifetime and pour them into the trust at your death. Because it functions as a safety net for your trust, it does not need to be distributed as widely as your trust or your powers of attorney.
Your successor trustee should know that the pour-over will exists and where to find it. If any assets need to pass through your will at death, your successor trustee or the named personal representative will need to locate it quickly. The original should stay in your binder.
Your HIPAA Authorization
Your HIPAA authorization gives specific people—typically family members—the legal right to receive information about your medical condition from your healthcare providers. Even if someone is your spouse or adult child, federal HIPAA law prohibits your doctor from discussing your condition with them unless you have authorized it in writing.
Give a copy of your HIPAA authorization to the people you have named in it. Your healthcare providers may also want a copy in your medical file. Like your other healthcare documents, keep several extra executed copies in your binder.
Guardian Nomination for Minor Children
If you have minor children, your estate plan should include a document nominating a guardian to care for them if you and your spouse both die or become incapacitated before your children reach adulthood. The person or people you have nominated as guardian should know about this document and should have a copy.
The original guardian nomination belongs in your binder. Your successor trustee should also be aware it exists, particularly if the same person serves as both the guardian of your children's persons and the trustee managing assets for their benefit.
Should You Give Beneficiaries a Copy of Your Trust?
This is a question I hear often and the answer is: usually not while you are alive. Your trust is a private document. It is one of the significant advantages a revocable living trust has over a will—a will becomes a public court record when it is filed in probate, but your trust never becomes public.
You are free to tell your beneficiaries that they are in your trust and what you plan to leave them. That is a personal decision. But there is no legal reason to hand out full copies of your trust to your beneficiaries during your lifetime. After your death, Arizona law does give beneficiaries the right to receive certain information about the trust. Your successor trustee will handle those disclosures at the appropriate time.
Where to Store Your Estate Plan Binder
The Best Option: A Fireproof Safe at Home
The best place to store your estate plan binder is inside a fireproof home safe. A good quality fireproof safe protects your documents from fire, flood, and theft. It is accessible to you—and to your successor trustee and family—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without requiring anyone to call a bank, get in a car, or obtain a court order.
Fireproof safes are widely available at hardware and home improvement stores and online. A floor-mounted or wall-bolted safe provides additional security against theft. At a minimum, invest in a fireproof document box or a fire-rated safe rated for at least one hour of fire protection.
Tell Your Successor Trustee Where the Safe Is
A fireproof safe does your family no good if no one knows where it is or how to open it. Tell your successor trustee exactly where the safe is located and how to access it. If it has a combination or digital code, make sure that information is stored somewhere your successor trustee can find it—but not somewhere so obvious that it defeats the purpose of a locked safe.
Consider keeping a simple letter of instruction—sometimes called a “Letter to My Successor Trustee”—in the binder itself. This letter can tell your successor trustee where the safe is, who to call, what financial accounts exist, where the deeds to your real estate are, and any other practical information they will need. It is not a legal document; it is a roadmap for the people who will be doing the work after you are gone.
Digital Copies Are a Smart Backup
We give all of our clients digital pdf copies of all of their estate plan documents on a thumb drive.
Scan all of your estate plan documents and store digital copies in a secure location—an encrypted cloud storage service or a password-protected USB drive kept with your paper binder. Digital copies are not substitutes for originals, but they provide a valuable backup if your paper documents are ever lost or destroyed, and they make it easy for your successor trustee to quickly read and share key documents without having to transport the physical binder.
If you use a cloud storage service, make sure your successor trustee knows how to access it. The login credentials can be stored in your letter of instruction—kept in the safe.
The Worst Option: A Safe Deposit Box at a Bank
I want to be direct about this because it is one of the most common mistakes I see: do not store your estate plan binder—or your original trust—in a safe deposit box at a bank.
Here is why. When you die, a bank may seal your safe deposit box. Your successor trustee—the person you specifically chose and authorized to manage your estate—may be told they cannot access the box without a court order. In some cases, even a surviving spouse has been denied access. Getting a court order requires time, money, and a legal proceeding. This is precisely what a well-designed revocable living trust is built to avoid. Locking your trust in a safe deposit box can force your family into the very court process your trust was designed to prevent.
There is also a practical problem: safe deposit boxes are accessible only during bank business hours. If your successor trustee needs your trust documents on a Saturday evening after you have been taken to the hospital, the bank is closed and there is nothing they can do.
Keep your estate plan binder at home in a safe. Leave the safe deposit box for jewelry, coins, or other valuables—not for documents your family needs to access quickly in a crisis.
A Quick Reference Summary
| Document | Who Should Receive a Copy | Original Stored |
|---|---|---|
| Revocable Living Trust | Successor trustee(s); co-trustee(s) | Fireproof home safe |
| Certification of Trust | Banks and financial institutions where trust accounts are held | Multiple executed copies in your binder |
| Pour-Over Will | Successor trustee (so they know it exists) | Fireproof home safe |
| Healthcare Power of Attorney | Healthcare agent; backup healthcare agent; primary care physician; hospitals you visit | Fireproof home safe; extra copies in binder |
| Living Will / Advance Healthcare Directive | Healthcare agent; backup healthcare agent; primary care physician; hospitals you visit | Fireproof home safe; extra copies in binder |
| Durable Financial Power of Attorney | Financial agent; banks (optional, in advance) | Fireproof home safe |
| HIPAA Authorization | Named authorized persons; primary care physician's file | Fireproof home safe; extra copies in binder |
| Guardian Nomination for Minor Children | Named guardian(s) | Fireproof home safe |
One More Thing: Update Your Documents When Life Changes
Knowing who has copies of your documents also means you have a responsibility to update those people when your documents change. If you amend your trust, revoke a power of attorney, or name a new healthcare agent, the people who have your old documents need to know. The last thing you want is your former healthcare agent showing up at the hospital with an outdated document while your current agent is being turned away.
When you update any document, collect and destroy old copies from the people who had them and replace those copies with the updated versions. It takes a phone call and a short drive, but it is worth doing right.
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Call or email Richard Keyt, the father
Direct phone: 480-664-7478
Email: [email protected]
Call or email Richard C. Keyt, the son
Direct phone: 480-664-7472
Email: [email protected]