Most people who put off an estate plan say the same thing, and they say it quietly: I'll do it when I can afford it. It sounds like prudence. It's actually a bet that the bill never arrives. The bill does arrive. It just has a different name on the envelope, and it's addressed to the person who's already having the worst month of their life.
You're comparing the wrong two numbers
When a founder asks what an estate plan costs, they're comparing two things: the fee for a plan, and zero. Zero feels like the default, the free option, the thing that happens if you do nothing.
But doing nothing isn't free. It hands the work to the court system and your family. Every state has a default process for people who die without a plan. That process costs money, and the estate pays for it, which means your family does.
The real comparison is between a plan you pay for once, on your schedule, while you're healthy, and a default process you don't pay for at all. Your family pays for it, on the court's schedule, while grieving.
Behavioral economists have a name for part of why this is hard. In present bias, we overweight costs and benefits that are close in time and underweight those that are far away. The fee is due this week. The benefit lands decades from now, to someone else. Your brain rounds that to "later," and "later" never has a calendar slot.
What the default actually charges
Probate costs vary enormously by state, by estate size and by how complicated the assets are. So be skeptical of anyone quoting you a single tidy figure, including me. What you can say with confidence is which line items exist:
- Court filing fees, which vary by jurisdiction.
- Attorney fees, sometimes hourly. A few states set statutory fee schedules based on the value of the estate. That means the cost scales with what you leave, not with how much work it takes.
- Executor compensation, which many states allow.
- Appraisals, including a business valuation when the company is a significant asset.
- Bond premiums, which some courts require of an executor when there's no will waiving it.
- Time, which isn't a line item but is the most expensive part. A business that can't be legally operated during probate loses customers, contracts and momentum every week it waits.
That last one is the cost founders underestimate most. A solo business with no legal successor can't easily sign, invoice, renew or pay. Your family isn't only paying fees. They're watching the asset they were counting on get smaller while they wait for legal authority.
What a plan actually costs, in tiers
There isn't one price, so think of it as layers. You can stop at any layer and still be better protected than you are today.
Tier one: free, and most founders haven't done it
A surprising amount of what matters costs nothing but an afternoon:
- Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, life insurance and any account that offers them. These pass outside probate and are free to set or change.
- Payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designations on bank and brokerage accounts, where your state allows them.
- A written inventory of every account, subscription, domain, login and who to call.
- A short letter of instruction that tells a person in shock what to do first.
None of these requires a lawyer. None of them is legally binding in the way a will is. But a family with a clear inventory and correct beneficiaries has solved a large share of the problem before a lawyer ever enters the room.
Tier two: the basic legal documents
This is a will, a durable power of attorney, and a healthcare directive. The cost depends on whether you use an online service, a flat-fee attorney or a fully hourly one.
Online tools are cheaper and fine for simple situations. They get riskier when you own a business entity, because the right wording depends on your operating agreement and your state's LLC law. A flat-fee attorney is usually the sweet spot for a founder: the price is known up front, and someone who does this daily checks that your documents don't contradict your entity.
Tier three: a trust and entity-level planning
A revocable living trust costs more up front, and there's another cost people forget: it only works if you actually retitle assets into it. A trust you signed but never funded does very little. Trusts tend to earn their cost when you own real property in several states, when the business is valuable and you want a smooth handoff, or when privacy and speed matter.
You don't have to start here. A will plus correct beneficiaries is a legitimate plan for many people, and it beats a perfect trust you never finish.
Where the money is actually well spent
If you have to ration your budget, spend it where the downside is largest and the DIY risk is highest.
- The entity. If you own an LLC or corporation, ask a lawyer how your operating agreement handles your death. This is where "I'll just leave it to my family" most often turns out to be legally untrue.
- Incapacity, not just death. A durable power of attorney is the document that lets someone act while you're alive but unable. It's often the one that gets used first.
- Anything with a personal guarantee or significant debt. The interaction between debt and your estate is worth an hour of professional time.
What you can safely do yourself: the inventory, the access list, the letter of instruction, and the beneficiary forms.
The cost nobody puts in the spreadsheet
There's a second price, and it isn't money. It's what your family spends searching. Hours on hold with banks. Guessing at passwords. Finding out a month late that a subscription renewed, or that a client was never told.
A plan doesn't just save fees. It turns your family's first weeks from detective work into a checklist. You can't put a dollar figure on that, but anyone who has settled the estate of someone who left nothing organized will tell you which they'd choose.
Your next moves
- Today, 20 minutes: log into your retirement, life insurance and bank accounts and check that the beneficiary is who you'd choose now, not who you chose years ago. If a beneficiary is blank, fill it in.
- This week: look up whether your state allows transfer-on-death or payable-on-death designations for your business bank account, and ask your bank for its form.
- This week: ask two estate attorneys for a flat-fee quote for a will, power of attorney and healthcare directive, and ask each whether your LLC's operating agreement needs changing. Quote requests cost nothing.
- This month: write one page listing every account that would need attention in the first 30 days, who to call, and where the real login information lives.
- Put it on the calendar: set one recurring reminder, twice a year, to review the list and the beneficiaries. Plans don't fail from being imperfect. They fail from being stale.
The cheapest version is the one that exists
The honest answer to "how much does it cost" is that the range is wide, and the low end is lower than you think. The expensive option is the one where nothing exists and someone else pays for it with money, time and attention they don't have.
This is the gap Heirloom is built for: the free tier-one work, the inventory, the beneficiaries, the access and the handoff, kept in one place so it doesn't depend on you remembering where you put it. It doesn't replace an attorney. It makes the attorney's hour count and gives your family something to open. If that's where you want to start, you can see how it works at heirloom.lumenlabs.works.