Life can be unpredictable, making it practical and empowering for women to have an estate plan. Whether you’re a busy professional, a dedicated mother, or someone going through significant life changes, an estate plan ensures your wishes are respected and protects your family from unnecessary stress.
Everyone can benefit from estate planning regardless of income or asset level. Twelve Points Wealth Management recently hosted the Essentials of Estate Planning webinar, featuring senior wealth manager Deborah Cartisser and estate planning attorney Debra Hedges, to help you learn why. Debra shared her experience of unexpectedly losing her husband. Navigating that loss reinforced just how essential it is to have documents in place before you need them, stressing that estate planning is about more than asset distribution.
Their insights make it clear that estate planning is not merely about distributing your assets — it’s about securing your future and making decisions that will benefit you and your loved ones.
Why Estate Planning is Essential for Women
Women often have multiple roles, including caregiver, professional, advocate, and financial decision-maker. They’re juggling responsibilities, planning for the future, and making tough decisions every day, and in recent years, we’ve seen more and more women become solely responsible for managing finances and making critical healthcare decisions for themselves and their families.
Estate Planning is About Control, Not Just the Future
Estate planning isn’t just about planning for the distant future. It’s about taking action now and making important decisions while you can. Who will care for your children? Who will make medical decisions if you’re unable to? Who will step in if you can’t manage your finances? Without an estate plan, courts may end up deciding these critical matters. For single women, divorced women, or women in blended families, this becomes even more essential, as family dynamics can be more complex.
Prenuptial and Postnuptial Agreements for Women
Estate planning also extends to protecting assets during marriage. Prenuptial and postnuptial agreements are becoming increasingly common as women build wealth, own businesses, or inherit assets they want to protect. These agreements help ensure family wealth stays within the family, protect personal wealth from a spouse’s financial liabilities, and create financial clarity within a marriage (even if the couple never entertains divorce).
Five Essential Estate Planning Documents
A strong estate plan starts with the following must-have legal documents:
Power of Attorney (POA)
A power of attorney gives someone you trust the ability to make financial and legal decisions if you cannot do so. Different types of POAs serve different purposes:
- Durable Power of Attorney: Stays in place even if you become incapacitated
- Non-Durable Power of Attorney: Ends if you become incapacitated and is often used for specific transactions
- Limited Power of Attorney: Gives authority for a specific task (such as signing documents for a home purchase)
- Springing Power of Attorney: Takes effect when a specific condition (such as medical incapacitation) is met
Advanced Medical Directives
A Healthcare Proxy and Living Will can ensure that your medical team honors your wishes. These documents also allow you to choose someone to make decisions about your medical care on your behalf.
HIPAA Authorization
This document lets you specify who can see your medical records when needed.
Last Will and Testament
A will outlines how you want your assets distributed and names who you want to care for your children if they are still minors. However, in some states (including Massachusetts), wills go through probate, which can be expensive. This makes it critical to consider other strategies for transferring wealth.
Trusts
A trust creates a structured way to manage your assets, avoid probate, and reduce taxes. Two primary types of trusts exist:
- Living (revocable) trusts help you manage assets during your lifetime and ensure a smooth transition if you’re incapacitated or die.
- Irrevocable trusts offer asset protection and tax advantages but cannot be changed once they’re established.
Considerations for Adult Children
Women naturally think about planning for minor children, but it’s equally important to understand the legal changes that occur when they turn 18. Just as adult children don’t automatically have the legal right to make decisions for their parents without proper documentation, parents also lose the automatic right to make decisions for their now-adult children. Without explicit permission from your adult children, you could be blocked from accessing their medical or financial information in an emergency.
Make sure your young adult has the following documents in place to give you or another trusted individual permission to act on their behalf:
- Healthcare Proxy
- HIPAA Authorization
- Durable Power of Attorney
- FERPA Release (if they’re in college)
Protecting Your Inheritance: The Tax Factor
Benjamin Franklin’s quip that the only certainties in life are death and taxes is a valuable reminder to consider how taxes impact what you leave behind. In Massachusetts, for example, your estate owes state taxes if its value exceeds $2 million per person. Unlike some states, Massachusetts does not offer portability, which means you and your partner must have a strategic plan to shelter up to $4 million.
At the federal level, estates that exceed $13.99 million (as of 2025) are taxed at 40%. This exemption is scheduled to expire at the end of this year, so be prepared to make adjustments.
For this reason, a well-structured estate plan often includes tools like trusts to safeguard assets. A trust can also offer protection from divorce, lawsuits, and creditors. As an added benefit, trusts can help keep your estate out of the probate process, which can be lengthy and expensive.
Avoiding Probate and Common Estate Planning Mistakes
Probate is a public, court-supervised process that can delay the distribution of your assets and expose your estate to unnecessary legal fees and creditors. You can bypass probate by:
- Using joint ownership for certain assets.
- Naming beneficiaries on life insurance policies, retirement accounts, and bank accounts.
- Setting up a trust to transfer assets outside of the probate process.
- Using transfer-on-death (TOD) designations for bank and investment accounts.
Even with a solid plan, common mistakes can derail your estate-planning goals:
- If you wait until later to put together an estate plan, you risk encountering an emergency where it’s too late to take action.
- Using DIY estate planning tools. DIY services such as LegalZoom are convenient and may save you money upfront, but you may miss key legal details.
- Not funding your trust. An unfunded trust is unusable. Assets must be correctly titled in the trust’s name.
- Not updating your plan. Review and update your plan after major life events (such as marriage, divorce, or childbirth), when tax laws change, and at least every three to five years.
Take Control of Your Future
Small, proactive steps today can save your family time, money, and stress in the future. If you haven’t started your estate plan yet, now is the time to act. Take matters into your own hands and ensure that you’re prepared when life takes unexpected turns.
Connect with our women’s advisory team at Twelve Points to help guide you in taking control of your financial future and ensuring your estate plan reflects your wishes. To learn more about our services tailored to Women, visit our website or reach out to deb@twelvepoints.com for more information.
