We spend months preparing tax returns. We reconcile every K-1, chase down every 1099, and make sure every deduction is defensible. We do this because the IRS demands it. There is a deadline. There are penalties. The system forces compliance.
Financial advisors operate on a similar rhythm. Quarterly reviews. Annual rebalancing. Performance reports that keep clients engaged and portfolios aligned. The cadence is built into the business model.
Estate planning has no such forcing mechanism. No annual deadline. No agency sending notices. No penalty for letting a will sit in a physical or digital drawer for 15 years while the world around it changes. This is why estate planning gets ignored. People care about their families. They just never get the push to act.
The result is staggering. According to Caring.com's
As a tax professional reading this, you already know the problem. You have seen it in your own client base. The client with the $4 million estate and a will from 2009 that names an ex-spouse as executor. The business owner who set up an LLC three years ago but never updated the trust to reflect the new entity. The retired couple whose beneficiary designations on their IRAs contradict everything in their estate plan because nobody told them to check.
The three-legged stool
Tax planning, financial planning and estate planning are supposed to function as a single, coordinated strategy. When they work together, wealth is built efficiently, protected from unnecessary taxation and transferred according to the client's wishes. When one leg is missing or outdated, the other two cannot compensate.
Consider a common situation. A tax advisor structures a client's income to minimize current liability. The financial advisor builds a portfolio designed to grow wealth over a 20-year horizon. But the estate plan, if one exists at all, was drafted before the client started a business, bought a second property or had grandchildren. The tax strategy and the investment strategy are optimized for a version of the client's life that no longer exists.
A structural failure. And it happens constantly because nobody owns the reminder.
The IRS owns the tax deadline. The financial advisor owns the portfolio review. Nobody owns the estate plan checkup. That responsibility falls to whoever is willing to raise the issue. In most cases, that should be us.
OBBBA created urgency
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, permanently increased the federal estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption to $15 million per individual and $30 million for married couples, indexed for inflation beginning in 2027. The long-feared sunset of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's doubled exemption is no longer a concern.
But here's what many practitioners are missing. The permanence of the higher exemption creates its own urgency. Clients who accelerated gifting strategies in 2024 and early 2025 to beat the anticipated sunset may now hold estate plans built around assumptions that no longer apply. Trusts that were funded aggressively under the old timeline may need to be reevaluated. Clients who delayed planning entirely because they believed the exemption would revert now have a permanent, higher threshold to plan around, and no excuse left to wait.
The law changed. The plans need to follow.
Why right now?
Tax season is the natural trigger for this conversation, and the logic is simple. The documents your clients are already gathering for their returns are the same documents an estate planning attorney needs to build or update a comprehensive plan.
Bank statements. Brokerage accounts. Real estate records. Business valuations. Retirement account balances. Life insurance policies. Ownership structures. All of it is sitting on the table. Your clients have already done the hard work of assembling their financial picture. They just do not realize they are holding the raw materials for an estate plan review.
One question before your client signs the return and walks out the door can change everything.
The question
When was the last time you reviewed your estate plan?
That's it. One question. You are doing what a competent advisor does. You are identifying a risk that your client has not considered and pointing them toward the professional who can address it.
If the answer is "I don't have one," you have just identified a client who is exposed to intestacy laws, potential family disputes and a probate process that will consume time and money. If the answer is "10 years ago," you have identified a plan that almost certainly does not reflect their current tax situation, asset structure or family circumstances. If the answer is "right before the TCJA sunset deadline," you have identified a plan that was built for a law that no longer exists in the form that was anticipated.
Either way, you have done your job.
What outdated estate plans actually cost
The consequences of a misaligned estate plan show up in the tax returns we prepare for estates and trusts every year.
Assets that could have been sheltered in a properly funded trust end up in probate, generating legal fees and delays. Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts override the will, sending assets to the wrong people. Charitable giving strategies that were built into the tax plan are never reflected in the estate documents, resulting in missed deductions and unfulfilled intentions. Business succession plans that exist on paper but were never coordinated with the operating agreement create disputes that destroy value.
The tax implications alone should concern every practitioner. The $15 million per person exemption under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act creates significant planning opportunities for clients who were previously at or near the old thresholds. But those opportunities only materialize if the estate plan is current, coordinated with the tax strategy and properly funded. A higher exemption means nothing if the documents do not reflect it.
A note to the profession
We are in the middle of tax season. The workload is relentless. The last thing any of us wants is another item on the checklist. I understand that.
Our clients trust us with their most sensitive financial information. They sit across from us every year and hand over documents that reveal everything about their financial lives. They assume we are looking at the whole picture.
If we are not asking about the estate plan, we are leaving a gap. And that gap has real consequences for the families we serve.
For firms that handle estate and trust work, this is an obvious integration point. For firms that refer out, this is an opportunity to strengthen relationships with estate planning attorneys and deliver more value to the client. Either way, the client benefits.
The tax return gets filed every year. The portfolio gets reviewed every quarter. The estate plan sits in a drawer until someone asks about it.
Be the one who asks.
