There are really two questions inside this one, and separating them matters.
The first is what to ask. If you practise in estate planning, you already know the legal and factual information you need from a client. The second is how to ask it: how the questionnaire is structured, sequenced, and presented so clients can provide that information accurately without getting lost or abandoning the process halfway through.
The checklist below can help you audit the substance of an existing intake. But first, there are five structural decisions that often determine whether the questionnaire works well in practice.
Part one: five decisions that matter more than the questions
1. One question at a time, not one enormous form
The traditional estate planning intake is often a long PDF. The client opens it, sees the scroll bar, estimates how long it will take, and may decide to come back to it later.
The same content presented one question at a time feels different. The client sees a single decision, answers it, and moves on. Progress is clear, and each step is small enough that stopping to think about an answer does not feel like stalling. Tax software, mortgage applications, and account-opening workflows have used this pattern for years.
There is another important benefit: when questions are presented individually, what comes next can depend on the answer. A static form has to show nearly everyone nearly everything. That means clients may be asked about business interests they do not have, blended-family issues that do not apply to them, or other irrelevant topics.
Conditional questions make the intake shorter and more relevant without sacrificing the information the firm needs.
2. People get entered once, then reused everywhere
A common structural problem is asking clients to enter the same person repeatedly.
A client's daughter may appear in the children section, then again as a beneficiary, successor executor, healthcare agent, and recipient of a particular account. In a traditional form, her information may be typed from scratch each time, creating multiple opportunities for inconsistent names, addresses, or other details.
A better approach is to capture each person once — name, relationship, contact information, date of birth — and then allow the client to select that person wherever needed later in the questionnaire.
This is more convenient for the client, but the larger benefit is the structure of the resulting data. When people are treated as people rather than repeated strings of text, every role held by the same individual can be viewed together. Address changes can be made once. Relationships between appointments and beneficiaries become easier to identify and review.
3. Marital status is the gate, and it should be asked once
A significant portion of an estate planning intake depends on marital status. Married clients may need spousal questions and simultaneous-death planning. Divorced clients may have agreements or court orders that need review. Widowed clients may have an existing trust or other planning from a deceased spouse. Single clients should not have to work through questions that do not apply to them.
Marital status therefore belongs near the beginning of the intake and should be captured once, with later sections relying on that answer.
Problems arise when marital status is collected in one section and then effectively asked again elsewhere using different wording. The questionnaire can end up with conflicting answers, and any conditional logic built around them becomes less reliable.
Which raises the question of separate links
Some intake systems address marital status by requiring the firm to choose the questionnaire before the client begins: one link for single clients, another for couples, and sometimes another for joint trust matters.
That approach can work, but it creates additional administrative steps. Someone at the firm must know which questionnaire applies before sending the intake. If the wrong version is sent, the client may need a replacement link or may begin completing a form that does not fit the matter. Couples where one spouse starts the intake independently can also be awkward to handle.
It also means maintaining multiple versions of substantially the same questionnaire.
A dynamic intake can instead use one link. The client answers the marital-status question early, and the questionnaire adjusts accordingly: spousal sections appear when relevant, wording changes where appropriate, and the spouse becomes available for selection in later sections.
Where the software supports conditional logic, this can substantially simplify both the client experience and the firm's questionnaire maintenance.
4. The channel is a security decision
Consider how estate planning intake often moves between a client and a firm. A PDF is sent as an email attachment. The client completes it, saves it locally, and emails it back. That document may contain dates of birth, identifying numbers, financial institutions, account information, and a detailed inventory of family assets.
The result can be multiple copies across desktops, sent folders, inboxes, and mail systems.
Digital assets create an additional problem. A conscientious client may respond to a question about digital property by sending a spreadsheet containing usernames, passwords, or other credentials simply because the questionnaire gave them no safer place to put the information.
An authenticated, encrypted portal avoids much of this exposure. Sensitive information does not need to travel as an email attachment, access can be controlled and logged, and material that should not be sent by email — such as credentials, recovery phrases, device passcodes, or cryptocurrency keys — can be handled through a system designed for that purpose.
If an intake does not provide a secure way to collect secrets, one reasonable approach is to record what exists and who should have access without collecting the credentials themselves. Those can be gathered separately through an appropriate secure channel if necessary.
5. Answers should arrive as data, not as a document
One of the largest hidden costs of intake is re-entry.
A completed questionnaire arrives, and someone at the firm may then copy information from the PDF into the practice management system, document assembly software, CRM, or other tools. The same name, address, and date of birth may be entered several times by someone reading from another screen.
That costs staff time, but it also introduces opportunities for error. Every re-entry creates another chance for a transposed digit, misspelled name, or inconsistent address.
An intake that captures structured data can reduce or eliminate that step. Client information can flow into the systems the firm already uses, creating one authoritative version of each fact rather than several separately maintained copies.
This is an important distinction between an intake form and an intake system. A well-designed questionnaire that ultimately produces only a PDF may improve the client's experience while still leaving significant administrative work for the firm.
Part two: the section-by-section map
The following is a checklist for auditing an existing estate planning intake. Not every section applies to every matter, which is another reason conditional questioning is useful. The notes below focus on what the intake may need to capture and why particular fields can be useful.
Identity and legal name
- Full legal name, exactly as it appears on identity documents
- Other names used — maiden names, former married names, professional names, and common misspellings on titles and accounts
- Date and place of birth
- Citizenship, and residency if different
- Primary residence, plus any other state or province where the client owns property or spends significant time
- Contact details, including one that is not a work address
Name history is easy to overlook. Assets may remain titled under a name the client used years ago, and a client may not think to mention property held under a maiden or former married name unless the intake asks directly.
Marital status and relationship history
- Current status: married, in a registered or common-law partnership, single, divorced, separated, or widowed
- Spouse or partner's full legal name and date of birth
- Date and place of marriage
- Whether a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement exists
- Prior marriages: how each ended, and whether obligations survive
- Whether the client and spouse are planning together or separately
Surviving obligations under a divorce decree or agreement are worth asking about directly rather than relying on a general "anything else we should know?" prompt. Clients may not think of a court-ordered insurance designation or similar obligation as part of their estate planning.
Children and dependents
- Every child: full name, date of birth, and relationship — biological, adopted, stepchild, or from a prior relationship
- Whether each child is a minor, and if so who should serve as guardian
- Any child with a disability or receiving means-tested benefits
- Any child the client intends to treat differently, and why
- Other dependents, such as a parent being supported or an adult child still living at home
Benefits eligibility and an intention to treat children unequally are particularly useful to identify before the first substantive meeting rather than discovering them late in the planning process.
The wider circle of people
Capture everyone who may appear elsewhere in the plan: other beneficiaries, proposed fiduciaries, charities, and professional advisors. Record the person's full legal name, relationship to the client, and enough contact information to reach them when appropriate.
If people are captured as structured records, later sections can ask the client to select an existing person rather than re-entering the same information.
Real property
- Each property: address, approximate value, and how it is titled
- Whether it is owned jointly, with whom, and in what form of joint ownership
- Mortgages and liens outstanding
- Property in another state, province, or country
- Timeshares and fractional interests
Titling deserves a direct question. Clients naturally describe what they own, but not necessarily how they own it. A client's understanding of who will receive a property is not the same thing as knowing how the deed is currently titled.
Out-of-jurisdiction property is worth identifying separately for the same reason.
Financial accounts
- Chequing, savings, and money market accounts, by institution
- Investment and brokerage accounts
- Retirement accounts, by type
- Education savings — 529 plans, RESPs, and their equivalents
- Custodial accounts held for minors
- Certificates of deposit, savings bonds, and annuities
- For each account: whether a beneficiary or payable-on-death designation exists
Beneficiary designations are especially useful to capture account by account. Asking about them while the client is already thinking about a particular account is more likely to surface an outdated or unexpected designation than a single broad question at the end of the section.
Business interests
- Entity name, type, and ownership percentage
- Whether a buy-sell or operating agreement exists, and what it provides regarding death or incapacity
- Who runs the business if the client cannot
- Key-person insurance
- Whether any successor has been identified or informed
It can be useful to ask separately whether an agreement exists and whether the client can actually produce a copy. Those answers are not always the same.
Insurance
- Life policies: carrier, type, face amount, owner, and current beneficiaries
- Whether any policy is owned by a trust
- Long-term care and disability coverage
- Employer-provided coverage
Owner and beneficiary should generally be separate fields. Employer-provided group life insurance also benefits from a specific prompt because clients may not think of coverage they receive automatically through work as an asset or policy they hold.
Personal property and specific gifts
- Items of significant value: vehicles, jewellery, art, collections, firearms
- Items of sentimental significance regardless of value
- Anything already promised to a particular person
- Whether a personal property memorandum is wanted
Sentimental importance is worth asking about separately from monetary value. A dollar threshold can exclude precisely the items most likely to matter to family members later.
Digital assets
Digital assets are still handled very briefly on many estate planning questionnaires, even though they now touch nearly every client's estate.
- Email accounts, which often serve as the recovery path to other accounts
- Smartphones and computers, and how they are unlocked — a locked device may also block access to two-factor authentication codes
- Financial and payment platforms without paper statements
- Cryptocurrency: exchange accounts and, separately, self-custody wallets and the location of the keys
- Domains, websites, and other online property generating income
- Photo libraries and cloud storage
- Social media accounts and the client's wishes for each
- Loyalty programmes and points balances, where transferable
- Subscriptions that may continue billing after death
The important structural distinction is between authority and access. An appointment or legal document may provide authority, but practical access may depend on credentials, recovery information, or a device passcode.
That is also why the security of the intake channel matters. Credentials, recovery phrases, and similar information should not simply be added to a questionnaire that circulates by ordinary email.
Self-custody cryptocurrency presents a particularly important example: an exchange account may have an institution that can respond to appropriate legal authority, while a lost private key or seed phrase may be impossible to recover.
Fiduciary appointments
- Executor or personal representative, with at least one successor
- Trustee, with successors, if a trust is involved
- Guardian for minor children, with an alternate
- Attorney-in-fact for financial matters
- Healthcare agent or proxy
- Digital executor or other person responsible for digital assets, where applicable
- Whether each proposed person has actually been asked
Alternates are worth making reasonably prominent rather than treating them as optional details at the end. It is also useful to know whether the proposed fiduciaries have actually been asked, since that can materially affect the first planning discussion.
Healthcare and end-of-life
- Life-sustaining treatment preferences
- Artificial nutrition and hydration
- Pain management priorities
- Organ and tissue donation
- Religious or cultural observances affecting care
- Whether documents already exist and where they are located
Regardless of the precise privacy rules applicable to a particular firm, this information is sensitive and should be handled accordingly when deciding where it is collected, stored, and made visible within the firm.
Pets
- Each animal, including species, age, and medical needs
- Intended caregiver, and whether that person has agreed
- Funds to be set aside, and whether a pet trust is wanted
This is a small section, but an important one for many clients. Its inclusion also helps ensure that practical concerns that matter deeply to the client are not overlooked simply because they do not fit neatly within traditional asset categories.
Final arrangements
- Burial or cremation, and any specific wishes
- Whether arrangements are prepaid, and where the documentation is located
- Service preferences
- Who should be notified
Professional advisors
- Accountant, financial advisor, insurance agent, and banker
- Any attorney holding prior documents
- Whether the client authorises contact
The questions that surface the real work
Leave room near the end for circumstances that do not fit neatly into a structured field:
- Anyone who might contest the plan or be surprised by it
- Anyone being deliberately omitted
- Estrangements, addiction, creditor problems, or an unstable marriage among beneficiaries
- Significant gifts already made
- Assets or citizenship outside the country
- Prior estate planning documents, wherever they are located
- An open field asking what worries the client most about the planning process
The open-ended question earns its place. Clients often raise concerns there that would not have emerged from a predefined list, and the response can provide useful context for the first substantive meeting.
Part three: what earns its place, and what does not
Good intake design also requires restraint. A few things are worth leaving out or handling differently.
Full account numbers. The institution and account type are often enough to identify an asset during intake. If the full number is needed later for funding or another task, it can be collected at that stage through an appropriate secure channel.
Identifying numbers over email. Social security numbers, social insurance numbers, account numbers, and similar information become particularly sensitive when combined with dates of birth and a full asset inventory. If the intake cannot collect that information securely, consider whether it needs to be collected there at all.
The same question twice in different words. Repetition frustrates clients and can produce contradictory answers that someone at the firm then has to reconcile.
Legal choices posed as form fields. Questions such as revocable versus irrevocable or per stirpes versus per capita may be better addressed through the underlying facts and client preferences, leaving the legal recommendation and final decision for the attorney-client discussion.
Precise valuations. Approximate figures are often enough to understand the size and composition of an estate during intake. Requiring exact values can cause clients to stop and search for statements when an estimate would have been sufficient.
Every question for every client. A business section adds no value for a client who owns no business. Conditional questioning preserves the firm's ability to collect detailed information without making every client work through every possible section.
How Eternal Pro handles this
These same principles inform the way Eternal Pro's estate planning intake is designed.
Clients answer one question at a time in a guided flow that adapts to their answers. Marital status is collected once and used by later sections, allowing firms to use one intake link for single clients, married clients, and clients planning jointly or separately. People are entered once and can then be selected for multiple roles, so the same daughter can be identified as a beneficiary, successor executor, and healthcare agent without re-entering her information three times.
The intake runs through a branded, authenticated client portal rather than an emailed questionnaire. The asset inventory can include traditional property, accounts, business interests, and insurance as well as email accounts, devices, cloud storage, domains, and cryptocurrency. Sensitive digital-access information such as credentials, recovery phrases, and device passcodes can be stored separately using encrypted, distributed cold storage rather than placed in an email attachment or ordinary matter document.
The result is structured data rather than simply a completed PDF. Eternal Pro integrates with most other Legal Tech software including 8am MyCase, Clio, Lawmatics, WealthCounsel, as well as thousands of other applications, reducing the need for staff to re-enter information into multiple systems.
Firms can also modify the questionnaire, add their own questions, create separate questionnaires for different matter types, and apply conditional logic. Clients retain access to a living dashboard, allowing information to be updated over time instead of becoming a snapshot that begins ageing as soon as the original questionnaire is completed.
Whether you use Eternal Pro or another system, the checklist above provides a useful framework for evaluating an estate planning intake: collect the information the attorney needs, ask only the questions relevant to that client, protect sensitive information appropriately, and structure the answers so they remain useful after the questionnaire is submitted.
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