Summer Travel Checklist: The Estate Planning Documents to Update Before You Leave

Before you leave on summer travel, review six core estate planning items: your living trust, last will and testament, durable financial power of attorney, advance health care directive, beneficiary designations, and a document location memo for someone you trust. For families with minor children, also confirm short-term guardianship arrangements while you are away. A brief annual review takes less time than packing and offers real peace of mind.

Summer in Orange County means road trips up the coast, family cruises, and overseas travel that fills up airports from John Wayne to LAX. For most families, the focus before a trip is on logistics: flights, hotels, what to pack.

Travel is also one of the most natural moments to take a quick look at an estate plan. Two reasons make it so. First, the act of being away from home, particularly when traveling internationally or with the whole family, makes the “what if” questions feel a little more present. Second, an annual checkpoint is a sound habit in its own right, and pre-travel is one of the easiest times to remember.

This checklist is not meant to add to the pre-trip stress. It is meant to help you confirm in fifteen or twenty minutes that the documents you already have still reflect your wishes,— and to flag any items worth a phone call to your attorney before you leave. For most families, the review confirms that everything is in order. For some, it surfaces an outdated beneficiary, a successor trustee who has moved across the country, or an account that was never funded into the trust. Either way, the half hour you take is time well spent is well invested

1. Your Living Trust

Pull out your living trust document to c. Confirm three things. First, the successor trustees you named are still the right people; that — they have not moved away, become estranged, or grown into roles where they could no longer realistically serve. Second, the beneficiaries set forth within the trust document itself are still the right people, the right order, the right percentages, and the right agesyou can locate the most recent amendment or restatement, not just the original signed years earlier. Third, the assets you intended to hold in the trust have actually been retitled into the trust’s name. An unfunded trust does not accomplish what it was created to accomplish, and assets sitting outside the trust may still pass through probate.

2. Your Last Will and Testament

Even if your primary plan is a living trust, a pour-over will is part of the typical package. Confirm the named executor is still the right choice and, for parents with minor children, that the named guardian and any backup guardians still reflect your current wishes.

3. Durable Financial Power of Attorney

A Durable Financial Power of Attorney names an agent who can act on your behalf in financial matters if you cannot. This document is especially valuable before international travel, when reaching you may be difficult and a U.S.-based agent may need to handle a time-sensitive transaction. Confirm the named agent is current, the document is signed and notarized, and your trusted family member or executor knows where the original is kept.

4. Advance Health Care Directive

An Advance Health Care Directive names someone to make medical decisions if you cannot, sets out your wishes regarding life-sustaining treatment, and (when properly drafted) includes HIPAA authorization so your agent can access your medical records. Confirm the agent is still the right person and that copies are available to your family at home in case of a call from a hospital abroad.

While not part of the formal trust and estate planning documents, it is helpful to check and confirm Beneficiary Designations on all non-trust assets. Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and transfer-on-death accounts pass to whoever is named on the beneficiary form, — regardless of what your will or trust says. A quick login to confirm current beneficiaries on the major accounts is one of the highest-value uses of fifteen minutes you can find. Pay particular attention to accounts opened years ago, those held prior to after marriages or divorces, or those opened before after the birth of a child. It is more common than most families realize for a beneficiary form to still name a former spouse or a parent who has since passed away. These are quiet errors that produce loud surprises after a death

This is the simplest item on the list and often the most useful. A short, even handwritten memo can inform — one or two pages — tells a trusted family member or executor where to find your originals, who to call, and what accounts exist. It is not a legal document, but in an emergency it can save your family days of searching.

Many estate emergencies during travel are not about end-of-life decisions; rather, they are about routine logistics that get harder when you are nine time zones away. Locked accounts, frozen credit cards, password resets that require a code sent to a phone you cannot reach. A document location memo that includes (or references) information about your password manager, where two-factor codes are sent, and which family members can act on which accounts is a practical companion to the formal legal documents above.

When a Pre-Travel Phone Call Is Worth It

Estate planning is not a topic anyone wants to spend their last weekend before vacation on. The honest answer is that you do not need to. The point of this checklist is to surface anything that genuinely needs attention before you leave, not to add new items to your plate. For the families that have already done the foundational estate planning work — trust, will, healthcare directive, financial power of attorney —, a pre-travel review usually confirms that the plan is doing exactly what it was built to do.

For families that have been meaning to put a plan in place but have not yet started, summer travel is a reasonable nudge to get the foundation built before the next trip. The peace of mind that comes from knowing your family is covered is a quiet, durable kind of preparation that outlasts any single vacation.

Goodman Estate Law

Brett J. Goodman is the founder and lead attorney at Goodman Estate Law, based in Laguna Hills, CA. The firm specializes in Estate Planning, Trust Administration, and Probate, helping individuals and families create or update wills and trusts. With a focus on personalized, compassionate, and professional guidance, Goodman Estate Law ensures clients’ assets and futures are protected during every stage of estate planning.