There is never a wrong moment to take a snapshot of where your estate plan stands – a new year, a birthday, a marriage or a birth in the family, a diagnosis, or simply the realization that your documents were signed a decade and two life changes ago. Whether you are updating an existing plan or starting from nothing, a checklist turns an intimidating project into a sequence of manageable decisions.
Below is the checklist we walk Kentucky clients through, document by document, including several items most generic checklists leave out and a few places where Kentucky law works differently than national articles suggest. It reflects current Kentucky law, including the 2026 reforms in Senate Bill 50 (2026 Ky. Acts ch. 134, effective July 15, 2026), which changed who inherits without a will, eliminated most executor bonds, and authorized electronic execution of wills and most other estate planning documents. Every plan should be customized to your family, your assets, and sometimes your business; the estate planning attorneys at Bunch & Brock in Lexington can tell you which of these documents you need and, just as importantly, which you don’t. Call 859-254-5522 or contact us online to get started.
1. A Last Will and Testament
The foundation of every plan. Your will directs how and to whom your probate assets are distributed – bank and investment accounts, real estate, vehicles, and personal property from jewelry to sentimental items – names the executor who will administer your estate, and, for parents, nominates a guardian for minor children. Without one, Kentucky’s intestate succession statutes decide who inherits, and the court decides who administers the estate.
Kentucky’s execution requirements are strict. Under KRS 394.040, a will that is not entirely in your own handwriting must be signed by you and by at least two credible witnesses in your presence and in the presence of each other. A properly drafted will also includes a self-proving affidavit under KRS 394.225, which allows it to be admitted to probate without tracking down the witnesses. Since July 15, 2026, Kentucky also recognizes electronic wills under the Uniform Electronic Wills Act (KRS 394.700–394.715), provided the two witnesses are Kentucky residents physically located in Kentucky at the time of signing. The convenience changes nothing about the need to get the formalities exactly right: a defectively executed will is treated as no will at all.
Two Kentucky rules that surprise people: marriage does not revoke a will you signed before the wedding (KRS 394.090), and divorce revokes only the provisions in favor of a former spouse (KRS 394.092), not the rest of the document. If you are married, both spouses need wills – we explain why in our article on whether you need a will if you are married in Kentucky.
2. A Durable Power of Attorney
This document names an agent to handle your legal and financial affairs if you become incapacitated – paying bills, managing accounts, dealing with real estate, filing tax returns, handling insurance and benefits, and whatever else you authorize, as narrowly or broadly as you choose. Without one, your family’s route to managing your affairs runs through a court-supervised guardianship or conservatorship under KRS Chapter 387: a public proceeding, with a jury, that costs far more than the document that avoids it.
Kentucky adopted the Uniform Power of Attorney Act in 2018 (KRS Chapter 457). Under KRS 457.040, a power of attorney is durable by default – it survives your incapacity unless the document says otherwise. Under KRS 457.050, it must be signed by you (or by someone at your direction in your conscious presence), and your signature is presumed genuine when acknowledged before a notary; since a 2020 amendment, witnesses are no longer required, though a notarized document is what banks, title companies, and county clerks expect. The Act also gives financial institutions clear rules for accepting a power of attorney and limits their ability to refuse one, which was a chronic problem under prior law. Powers of attorney drafted before 2018 deserve review; banks are noticeably more comfortable with documents that track the current statute, and certain powers – making gifts, changing beneficiary designations, creating or amending trusts – must be expressly granted or the agent does not have them. (More on our financial power of attorney page.)
3. A Designation of Health Care Surrogate
This is the document most people mean when they say “medical power of attorney,” and in Kentucky it has a specific statutory name and a specific statutory form. Under the Kentucky Living Will Directive Act (KRS 311.621–311.643), an adult with decisional capacity may designate one or more adult health care surrogates to make health care decisions when he or she no longer can. We prepare these documents for clients routinely, and we consider them as essential as the will.
What a health care surrogate can do
Under KRS 311.629, a surrogate may make any health care decision you could make for yourself if you had capacity – consenting to or refusing surgery, medication, hospitalization, nursing home placement, and other treatment – provided the decisions follow the wishes you expressed in your directive. The surrogate must consider the attending physician’s recommendation and must honor any instructions you gave. A surrogate may authorize withholding or withdrawing artificially provided nutrition and hydration only in the circumstances the statute allows: when death is expected within a few days, when you are in a permanently unconscious state and your directive authorizes it, when the nutrition cannot be physically assimilated, or when its burden outweighs its benefit – and never when it is needed for comfort or relief of pain.
When it takes effect
A surrogate has no authority while you can decide for yourself. Under KRS 311.629(2), the surrogate may not act in any situation in which your attending physician has determined in good faith that you have decisional capacity. The designation is a safety net, not a transfer of control.
Who can serve
Any adult, with one exception: under KRS 311.625(4), an employee, owner, director, or officer of a health care facility where you are a patient or resident may not serve as your surrogate unless related to you within the fourth degree or a member of the same religious or fraternal order. You may name more than one surrogate, but if two or more are to act at the same time, KRS 311.623 requires them to agree unanimously – a rule that argues strongly for naming one surrogate and one or more successors rather than co-surrogates.
How it must be signed
Under KRS 311.625(2), the designation must be in writing, dated, and signed by you (or at your direction), and either witnessed by two or more adults in your presence and in each other’s presence, or acknowledged before a notary. The witness rules are stricter than most people expect: a blood relative, anyone who would inherit from you under Kentucky’s intestacy laws, an employee of a health care facility where you are a patient (unless serving as the notary), your attending physician, and anyone financially responsible for your health care are all disqualified from witnessing. A document witnessed by your spouse and your daughter at the kitchen table is not valid. This is the most common defect we see in do-it-yourself directives. Since July 15, 2026, advance directives may also be executed electronically under the Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act (KRS 394.720–394.750).
What happens if you have no surrogate
Kentucky does not leave you without a decision-maker, but it chooses one for you. Under KRS 311.631, if you have no advance directive, health care decisions are made by the first available, willing, and competent person in this order: a court-appointed guardian; the attorney-in-fact under a durable power of attorney; your spouse; an adult child (or a majority of adult children who are reasonably available); your parents; your nearest living relative; and, since a 2024 amendment, an adult friend who has shown special care and concern for you. That default produces predictable problems. An estranged spouse outranks the adult child who has cared for you. Adult children who disagree can deadlock. An unmarried partner of thirty years has no standing at all unless no relative can be found. And a family that cannot agree ends up in a guardianship proceeding in District Court, with a judge deciding who speaks for you. A surrogate designation prevents every one of those outcomes.
How it relates to the other health care documents
The surrogate designation is one part of the statutory Kentucky Living Will Directive. The same form can also carry your living will instructions (below), and you may complete either part without the other. A medical order for scope of treatment (MOST) under KRS 311.6225 is different: it is a physician’s order, signed by you or your surrogate and by a physician, for people with serious illness, and it translates your wishes into orders that emergency responders and hospitals follow immediately. Where a living will and a MOST form conflict, the living will controls. A do-not-resuscitate order is likewise a medical order, recognized only on the approved statutory forms. And under KRS 311.6231, even a court-appointed guardian is bound by the terms of your advance directive – which means a properly signed surrogate designation protects your choices even if a guardianship is later opened. (Our medical power of attorney page covers the surrogate designation in more detail.)
4. A Living Will Directive
Where the surrogate designation names who decides, the living will states what you want. Under KRS 311.623, a living will directive may direct that life-prolonging treatment be withheld or withdrawn, that artificially provided nutrition and hydration be withheld or withdrawn, and that your organs or tissue be donated at death. It becomes operative only when you can no longer make your own decisions and, for life-prolonging treatment, only when your condition meets the statutory definitions of terminal or permanently unconscious. Under KRS 311.629(4), life-sustaining treatment and nutrition must be continued for a pregnant woman unless two physicians certify that they will not permit the live birth of the child or will physically harm the woman or prolong severe pain.
A living will and a surrogate designation work together: the living will settles the questions families dread most, and the surrogate handles everything the living will could not anticipate. Under KRS 311.627, either may be revoked at any time by a signed and dated writing, by oral statement in the presence of two adults with one a health care provider, or by physically destroying the document. Kentucky’s Living Will Directive is the statutory equivalent of what many states call an “advance health care directive” and a “health care power of attorney” combined; older articles – including the earlier version of this one – that list those as two separate documents are describing another state’s system. (See our advance health care directives page.)
5. A HIPAA Authorization
A small document with outsized practical value, and one most checklists omit. A HIPAA release authorizes physicians and hospitals to share your medical information with the people you name – your surrogate, your agent, your children, a trusted friend. Without it, federal privacy law can leave the very people you appointed unable to get answers about your condition, particularly before the point at which your surrogate’s authority formally begins. It costs almost nothing to include and prevents a maddening problem.
6. Trusts – With a Clear-Eyed View of What They Do
Trusts are versatile. A revocable living trust holds assets during your life, manages them seamlessly through incapacity, and distributes them at death privately and without probate; you can amend it throughout your lifetime as marriages, births, and deaths reshape your family. Testamentary trusts written into a will hold an inheritance for children until an age you choose rather than paying it out at eighteen. Irrevocable trusts serve more specialized goals: asset protection, long-term care and Medicaid planning, life insurance ownership, and, for very large estates, transfer-tax strategies. Senate Bill 50 also gave Kentucky a Uniform Directed Trust Act, a Uniform Trust Decanting Act, and a Kentucky Qualified Dispositions in Trust Act, expanding what irrevocable trusts can accomplish here.
One honest correction to what many articles (including the earlier version of this one) say: for most families, a revocable trust does not reduce taxes. Its assets remain yours for income tax purposes and are included in your estate. Its real benefits are probate avoidance, privacy, incapacity management, and control over how and when beneficiaries receive assets. Kentucky has no estate tax, and its inheritance tax turns on each beneficiary’s relationship to you – spouse, children, parents, grandchildren, and siblings are fully exempt – not on whether assets pass through a trust. If a trust is on your checklist, be clear about which job you are hiring it to do. (For the full menu of probate-avoidance tools, see our guides to revocable and irrevocable trusts and how to avoid probate in Kentucky.)
7. Guardian Nominations – and Special Needs Planning
For parents of minor children, the guardian nomination – made in your will – may be the single most important provision in the entire plan. It tells the court who you chose to raise your children if the unthinkable happens, and names a backup. Choose people who share your values, confirm they are willing, and revisit the choice as children grow. Without a nomination, the court chooses, often from among relatives who disagree. Our guide to naming a guardian in your will covers the decision in depth.
If you have a child with a disability, one more document is essential: a special needs trust (also called a supplemental needs trust). Leaving assets outright to a child who receives SSI or Medicaid can disqualify the child from the very benefits he or she depends on; a properly drafted special needs trust holds the inheritance for the child’s supplemental benefit without jeopardizing eligibility. This is one of the clearest examples of why estate plans must be customized – a standard will can accidentally do real harm here. The same is true of any beneficiary, at any age, who receives means-tested benefits.
8. Beneficiary Designations – Reviewed and Coordinated
The beneficiaries named on your retirement accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, and payable-on-death or transfer-on-death bank and brokerage accounts receive those assets directly, regardless of what your will says. That makes the designation forms estate planning documents in their own right – and the most frequently botched ones. Your checklist here: confirm every account has a primary and a contingent beneficiary; never name a minor child directly (the result is a court-supervised conservatorship and an outright payout at eighteen – see what happens when a minor is a beneficiary); update after every marriage, divorce, birth, and death, because Kentucky law strikes an ex-spouse from your will after divorce but not from your beneficiary forms; and coordinate the designations with the rest of the plan so they do not quietly contradict it.
Two Kentucky-specific points. First, under the 2026 amendments to KRS 392.020, a surviving spouse’s statutory share is now measured against a pool that includes beneficiary-designated accounts, retirement accounts, payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts, and survivorship property – so designations that leave a spouse out no longer sidestep the spouse’s rights, and blended-family plans built on beneficiary forms need review. Second, Kentucky does not allow transfer-on-death deeds for real estate; a bill to authorize them (Senate Bill 34) passed the Senate in the 2026 session but died in a House committee, so real estate still passes by will, by a deed that expressly creates survivorship, or through a trust. For retirement accounts, the federal SECURE Act’s ten-year payout rule affects whether a trust should be named as beneficiary – a question worth specific advice. (More on the coordination problem in our guide to common estate planning mistakes.)
9. A Funeral Planning Declaration
Kentucky gives you a legally recognized way to decide your own final arrangements: the funeral planning declaration under KRS 367.93103 In it, you may designate the person who will direct the disposition of your remains, record your wishes – burial or cremation, the service, the location – or both. Under KRS 367.93103, the declaration must be signed before two adult witnesses and acknowledged before a notary, and it may not be folded into your will or power of attorney; it must be a separate document. A person employed in the funeral or cemetery business may not be your designee unless related to you. It belongs on the Kentucky checklist ahead of the informal “letter of instructions” many articles suggest, because it is binding on your family where a letter is not – and because a will is often not read until after the funeral. If funding those arrangements in advance appeals to you, weigh the options first; we compare prepaid contracts, payable-on-death accounts, and insurance in our guide to prepaid funerals in Kentucky.
10. Digital Asset Authority and Inventory
A modern estate includes email, photographs, financial apps, social media, cloud storage, domain names, loyalty points, and cryptocurrency. Kentucky adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in 2020 (KRS Chapter 395A), which allows you to direct in your will, trust, or power of attorney whether and how your executor, trustee, or agent may access your digital accounts, and which controls what providers must disclose. Your checklist: grant your executor and agent explicit digital asset authority in your planning documents; set up the major platforms’ legacy-contact and inactive-account tools, which take priority over your will under the Act; and maintain a secure, current inventory of accounts in a password manager or other protected location your executor can reach. One firm rule: never put passwords in your will, which becomes a public record when probated.
11. A Letter of Intent – for Everything the Documents Can’t Say
A letter of intent is not legally binding, and that is exactly its role: it carries the context. Where things are located, who your advisors are, the story behind particular gifts, guidance for a child’s care, wishes about heirlooms and future charitable giving. Keep it with your documents and update it freely – no formalities required. Just know its limits in Kentucky: wishes you need enforced – the disposition of your remains, gifts of specific property – belong in the binding documents above, because Kentucky does not give legal effect to informal lists of personal property the way some states do.
12. Deeds and Titles – Reviewed for Survivorship
A checklist item almost no one includes, and one that produces some of the most expensive surprises in probate. Under KRS 381.050, real estate conveyed to a husband and wife is held as tenants in common – with no right of survivorship – unless the deed expressly says otherwise. The same principle applies to other co-owned property under KRS 381.120 and 381.130. A deed that names both spouses but omits survivorship language leaves half the house in the first spouse’s probate estate. We review clients’ deeds, vehicle titles, and account registrations as part of every plan, and we find the problem regularly – most often on a deed prepared years ago in a transaction where no one was thinking about survivorship.
Beyond the Documents: Two Conversations Worth Having
Talk to your heirs
Discussing your decisions with family while you are living prevents the surprises, hurt feelings, and disputes that erupt when a will is read cold. It is a hard conversation that consistently proves to be a valuable one, and occasionally a warm one.
Talk to your executor, your agent, and your surrogate
Each of these people will act for you at a difficult moment. Confirm each is willing, walk them through the plan and where the documents are while you are healthy, and name an alternate for every role. Two Kentucky notes make the executor’s job easier than it used to be: under the 2026 probate reforms, a personal representative no longer must post a surety bond unless the court orders one (KRS 395.130), and the inventory deadline has been extended to 90 days. If you are considering an out-of-state executor, raise it with your attorney; a nonresident fiduciary must designate a Kentucky resident as agent for service of process (KRS 395.015).
When to Review the Checklist
Every three to five years, and after any of the following: marriage or divorce (yours or a child’s); the birth or adoption of a child or grandchild; a death in the family; a move to or from Kentucky; a significant change in assets, including buying or selling a home or business; a diagnosis or a change in the health of a spouse, child, or named fiduciary; and any significant change in the law – including Kentucky’s 2026 probate and inheritance reforms, which affect the intestacy shares, the spousal rights, and the execution options behind nearly every document on this list.
Frequently Asked Questions
What documents should every Kentucky estate plan include?
At minimum: a will, a durable power of attorney under KRS Chapter 457, a designation of health care surrogate, and a living will directive under KRS 311.621–311.643. From there, trusts, guardian nominations, a funeral planning declaration, a HIPAA authorization, digital asset authority, and coordinated beneficiary designations and deeds round out a complete plan.
What is a Designation of Health Care Surrogate in Kentucky?
It is the Kentucky statutory document, part of the Living Will Directive under KRS 311.621–311.643, in which you name an adult to make health care decisions for you when your physician determines you no longer have decisional capacity. It is Kentucky’s equivalent of a medical power of attorney or health care proxy.
Is a health care surrogate the same as a power of attorney?
No. A durable power of attorney under KRS Chapter 457 covers financial and legal matters. A health care surrogate under KRS 311.621–311.643 covers medical decisions. Most people name the same trusted person in both roles, but they are separate documents with separate signing rules, and one does not substitute for the other.
Is Kentucky’s living will the same as a health care power of attorney?
Kentucky’s Living Will Directive does both jobs in one statutory form: it states your treatment wishes and designates your health care surrogate. You may complete either part without the other.
Who makes my medical decisions if I have no health care surrogate?
Under KRS 311.631, the first available person in this order: a court-appointed guardian, your attorney-in-fact under a durable power of attorney, your spouse, an adult child or majority of adult children, your parents, your nearest living relative, and then an adult friend who has shown special care and concern. Naming a surrogate lets you choose instead.
Can my spouse or child witness my health care surrogate designation?
No. Under KRS 311.625(2), blood relatives, anyone who would inherit from you under Kentucky’s intestacy laws, your attending physician, employees of a facility where you are a patient (unless acting as the notary), and anyone financially responsible for your care are disqualified as witnesses. Having the document notarized is the simpler route.
Do I need a trust, or is a will enough?
It depends on your goals. A will is essential for everyone; a trust adds probate avoidance, privacy, incapacity management, and control over timing – but for most families it does not reduce taxes, so add one for the jobs it actually performs.
Does Kentucky allow transfer-on-death deeds?
No. As of September 2026 Kentucky has not adopted transfer-on-death deeds for real estate; a bill to authorize them passed the Senate in the 2026 session but died in committee. Kentucky does allow payable-on-death and transfer-on-death registrations for bank and brokerage accounts, and real estate can be kept out of probate with a survivorship deed or a trust.
Can I sign my estate planning documents electronically in Kentucky?
Yes, as of July 15, 2026, for wills (KRS 394.700–394.715) and for most other estate planning documents, including powers of attorney, advance directives, and trusts (KRS 394.720–394.750), subject to each statute’s witnessing and notarization requirements.
How often should I review my estate plan?
Every three to five years, and after any marriage, divorce, birth, death, move, or significant change in assets, health, or the law.
Can I just write my wishes in a letter?
A letter of intent is valuable context but not enforceable. Binding wishes – property distribution, funeral arrangements, guardians, health care decisions – belong in the properly executed documents.
Start Checking Boxes with a Kentucky Estate Planning Attorney
It is never too early to create an estate plan – young or old, wealthy or middle class, the documents above are how you keep control over your assets, your medical care, and your family’s future, and how you spare the people you love a guardianship proceeding, a probate dispute, or a hospital-room argument about what you would have wanted. The estate planning attorneys at Bunch & Brock have decades of experience turning this checklist into customized, coordinated plans for Central Kentucky families: wills, powers of attorney, health care surrogate designations and living wills, trusts where they earn their place, and the deeds and beneficiary designations that make the plan work as a whole.
To find out which of these documents you need, call our Lexington office at 859-254-5522 or contact us online to schedule a consultation.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Bunch & Brock, PSC. References reflect Kentucky and federal law as of September 2026, including 2026 Ky. Acts ch. 134 (Senate Bill 50), effective July 15, 2026. For advice about your specific circumstances, please consult a licensed Kentucky attorney.
