Most people believe that once they have a will, the hard part is done. It is one of the most common assumptions a Texas attorney hears — and one of the most costly — because a will was never meant to be the whole plan.
A will is one instrument. A plan is the arrangement of every asset, every document, and every decision, so that when something happens — incapacity, long-term care, death — the outcome is the one you chose, not the one a default rule chose for you.
This piece pulls together a week of plain-language writing on the subject, because these mistakes tend to travel as a set. Here are the six that cost Texas families the most, and what to do about each.
This is the one that surprises people most, so it goes first. Your will does not control your 401(k). Or your IRA. Or your life insurance. Those accounts pass by beneficiary designation — the form you filled out the day you opened the account and probably haven’t looked at since. Whoever is named on that form inherits, and the will does not override it. Your will can say one thing and the beneficiary form can say another, and the form wins.
For many Texas families, those accounts are the single largest thing that will ever change hands — and they are steered by a piece of paper most people can’t remember signing. Named an old partner years ago? Went through a divorce since? The form may still say what it said then, and for federal retirement plans, state law often can’t fix that after the fact. The two-minute move: pull the beneficiary designations on every retirement account and insurance policy you hold. Check the primary. Check the contingent. Make sure they match the plan you think you have.
The most common estate-planning failure I see isn’t complicated or malicious. It is a couple who assumed everything would “just go to the kids.” Here is how it goes wrong. Second marriage. Each spouse has children from before. One spouse dies, and everything passes to the surviving spouse — simple, loving, exactly what they wanted. Then the surviving spouse passes years later, and under their plan, everything goes to their children. The first spouse’s children are left out entirely. No one intended it. The structure simply did what structures do.
This is accidental disinheritance, and blended families walk into it constantly. It doesn’t take bad blood or a fight — it takes a plan built for a first marriage carried into a second one without a second look. The tools to prevent it are well established: trusts that provide for a surviving spouse during their lifetime while protecting each set of children’s inheritance underneath. But they only work if the plan is built for the family you actually have, not the one the standard forms assume.
If your home is the main thing you’ll leave behind, this section matters more than any other. Texas recognizes an instrument called a Lady Bird deed — formally, an enhanced life estate deed. You keep full control of your home for life: you can sell it, mortgage it, or change your mind entirely, with no one else’s permission required. But the moment you pass, the home transfers directly to the person you named, without going through probate at all.
That combination is what makes it useful. An ordinary deed that adds your children now gives away control now. A Lady Bird deed gives away nothing while you’re alive — it takes effect only at death. For many Texas families it does several things at once: it keeps the homestead out of probate, it preserves the stepped-up tax basis for heirs, and — done correctly and in the right circumstances — it can support Medicaid planning by helping the home pass outside the probate estate. That last piece is its own conversation, because the rules are specific and the timing matters. It isn’t right for every situation, but for a homeowner whose house is their largest legacy, it’s one of the most useful tools most people don’t know exists.
People who put off a will sometimes assume the consequence is simply “everything goes to my spouse.” In Texas, it often doesn’t. Dying without a will means your estate passes by intestate succession — a default formula in the Texas Estates Code. Depending on whether you have children, whether those children are also your spouse’s, and whether property is community or separate, the estate can divide in ways that surprise everyone: a surviving spouse sharing ownership of the house with children, or with your parents, or with siblings you’re not close to.
None of that reflects what you wanted. It reflects a formula written for everyone, applied to you because you didn’t write your own. The point of a plan isn’t wealth or complexity. It is being the person who decides, instead of leaving the people you love to sort out a structure none of you chose.
Estate planning gets discussed as if it’s only about death. The more common crisis is incapacity — a fall, a stroke, a diagnosis — where someone is very much alive but can no longer make financial or medical decisions. If no one holds a valid power of attorney when that day comes, your family may have to go to court to get authority to act, at exactly the moment they can least afford the delay and expense. A durable power of attorney for finances and a medical power of attorney are what keep decisions inside the family and out of the courthouse.
This is also the heart of a conversation many families keep postponing — the one adult children need to have with aging parents. Is there a will, and is it current? Who holds power of attorney if a parent can’t make decisions? The families who open that door early, calmly, at a kitchen table rather than under fluorescent lights in a hospital hallway, are never the ones who wish they’d waited. You’re not asking so you can take over. You’re asking so a parent’s wishes are the ones that get followed.
For a growing number of Texas families, the largest financial event of a lifetime isn’t death — it is the cost of long-term care. A spouse entering skilled nursing can spend down a lifetime of savings with startling speed, and the rules that govern how Medicaid treats a family’s home, income, and assets are specific, unforgiving, and time-sensitive.
Medicaid planning done early preserves options that vanish once care is already needed. The look-back period, the treatment of the homestead, the coordination between a spouse who needs care and a spouse who remains at home — these are not decisions to improvise in a crisis. They are the reason elder law exists as its own discipline, and the reason the earlier the conversation happens, the more that can be protected.
Read those six together and the pattern is clear. Every one of them is a place where, if you don’t decide, something else decides for you — a beneficiary form, a default statute, a probate court, a Medicaid rule. Planning is nothing more exotic than being the one who decides. That is also why none of it requires being wealthy or having a complicated life. It requires having looked.
Most families who put it off aren’t avoiding a hard project; they’re avoiding a conversation they assume will be longer and grimmer than it turns out to be. It is usually shorter than you think.
If you’ve been meaning to get this handled — a will reviewed, a deed considered, a parent’s plan opened up — that is the nudge. Deciding for yourself is the whole idea.
Lozano Legal Advisors PLLC is a Dallas–Fort Worth firm led by Norris Lozano, a licensed Texas attorney with 30+ years in practice, admitted to the State Bar of Texas, the United States Tax Court, and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He spent eighteen years as a Downtown Dallas law partner representing the largest financial institutions in Texas, and served as Chief Executive Officer and General Counsel of the Portland Family of Funds, which secured $180 million in New Markets Tax Credits from the U.S. Treasury and closed transactions exceeding $1.1 billion. His practice covers estate planning, elder law and Medicaid planning, real estate, business formation, corporate and partnership work, tax resolution, and federal tax credit finance.
Our firm combines modern technology, efficient systems, and attorney oversight to provide responsive legal services while maintaining personal attention to every client matter.