Pre-planning Inheritance Worksheet

The decisions nobody helps you make

Every estate planning guide tells you to decide who gets what. None of them help you decide. This worksheet walks through the nineteen decisions that cause the arguments, so you can work them out before you sit down with an attorney.

Open the worksheet

Free. No card.

Attorneys draft what you hand them. Online will services give you a form to fill in. Every bank has a PDF telling you to "consider your beneficiaries."

The part that keeps people up at night is none of that. It is how to split a house, a cabin, a business, and a lifetime of accumulated things between people who love each other and remember things differently.

That is the part this worksheet is about.

What's in it

Nineteen decisions in four parts. The worksheet is where each one gets its explanation and where you can work the numbers.

Part 1. What cannot be divided

1. The house. Sold and split, or does one child keep it?
2. If one child keeps it, what price, who pays for the appraisal, and does the buyout come out of their share or out of pocket?
3. The cabin or second home. Shared ownership between siblings sounds generous and is a reliable way to create a decade of resentment.
4. The business. Who owns it and who runs it are two separate decisions.
5. The things worth little and meaning everything. Who picks, and in what order?

Part 2. What makes equal unequal

6. Pre-tax versus post-tax. Two hundred thousand in a traditional IRA and two hundred thousand in a brokerage account are not the same gift.
7. Lifetime gifts. The down payment, the tuition, the loan that never came back.
8. Caregiving. The child who moved home or drove to every appointment.
9. Need. One child does not need it and one does.
10. A child's marriage, and what happens to an inheritance in a divorce.
11. A child who should not receive a lump sum.

Part 3. The people

12. Who is the executor, and do they know you picked them?
13. Who is the backup?
14. Stepchildren. What you do not decide, the law decides for you.
15. A child with a disability, and whether a direct inheritance costs them benefits.
16. Charity. Off the top, or out of one share?

Part 4. Telling them

17. Do your children know the plan?
18. Together or separately?
19. What do you want them to understand about why?

A will records the decision and explains nothing. The reasoning is what prevents the argument.

Why this one is different

Working through the list is the easy half. The hard half is seeing what a given split looks like once it is real.

Celestial Divide lets you lay out what you own, split it more than one way, and see how each version lands with each person. You can try the version where the cabin goes to your daughter without anyone knowing you tried it.