Educational content only. Not legal, financial, tax, or medical advice. Plan Your Passing is not a law firm and no attorney-client relationship is created here. Estate, probate, tax, and inheritance laws differ by country, state, and county. You are responsible for confirming what applies to you. Always consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction before acting on anything you read or generate on this site.
LGBTQ+ adults — partnered, chosen family, parents via surrogacy/adoption
Estate planning when the law doesn't assume your family
Without intentional planning, the people who matter most to you can be locked out of medical decisions, inheritance, and your kids' guardianship. Even with marriage equality nationwide, every estate-planning document needs to be explicit.
The hardest thing
What this audience faces that nobody warns them about
Hostile family members of origin can sometimes still successfully override unwritten intentions. Healthcare directives and HIPAA releases need to name your chosen people EXPLICITLY — and your kids need adoption paperwork if you're not their biological parent, even if you're legally married to their biological parent.
Three things that are different for you
If you take nothing else away
01
Second-parent adoption is still essential in some states
Even with marriage equality, some states don't automatically recognize you as the legal parent of your spouse's biological child. Second-parent adoption ($1,500-$3,500) creates an inarguable parental relationship that travels across state lines and can't be challenged by relatives of your spouse.
02
Healthcare directives need explicit chosen-family naming
Hospitals default to 'next of kin' rules from a 1960s playbook. If you're estranged from biological family, your healthcare directive needs to specifically name your partner, your chosen family, your closest friend — and explicitly name those you DO NOT want involved. Same for HIPAA authorization.
03
Trust-based planning works well for chosen-family structures
Wills go through probate, which is public — and which gives biological family members an opportunity to contest. Revocable living trusts stay private and pass directly to whom you choose. For LGBTQ+ adults with complicated family-of-origin situations, this is one of the strongest privacy + intentional-direction tools available.
The scripts that fit your situation
Paste-able family conversation starters
Your chosen family is your family. Make sure the paperwork agrees.
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