I've practiced law for thirty years, most of it serving families in Sheepshead Bay, Marine Park, Bay Ridge, and across Brooklyn and Queens.

In that time, I've noticed a pattern.

The families who lose the most money after a death are rarely the families with no plan at all. They're the families with a broken plan. A will signed in 1998. A beneficiary form nobody updated after a divorce. A house that was never moved into the trust that was drafted to hold it.

The good news is that every one of these mistakes is fixable. Most of them take an afternoon to correct. Here's how to find them and repair them, step by step.

Step 1: Find Every Beneficiary Form and Read It

Start here, because this is where the biggest surprises hide.

Your retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and many bank accounts pass by beneficiary designation. Those forms override your will. If your will leaves everything to your children but your old 401(k) form names your ex-spouse, your ex-spouse gets the account.

This has been litigated all the way up. In Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, the Supreme Court ruled that a former spouse collected life insurance proceeds because the form was never updated after the divorce, even though state law said otherwise.

Here's your fix:

• Request a current beneficiary confirmation from every retirement account, pension, and insurance policy you own.

• Name a primary and a contingent beneficiary on each one. A missing contingent beneficiary can push the asset into probate.

• Repeat this review after every marriage, divorce, birth, and death in the family.

I've watched families in Bensonhurst and Forest Hills lose six figures to a form that took ten minutes to update. Fix this one first.

Step 2: Treat Probate as a Cost You Can Plan Around

Many homeowners I meet in Sheepshead Bay assume probate is a formality. The numbers tell a different story.

In New York, probate typically costs 3% to 7% of the estate. For a $500,000 estate, that's $15,000 to $35,000 before your family sees a dollar. A modest Brooklyn home alone puts most of my clients well past that $500,000 mark.

Time matters too. The process typically runs 9 to 18 months for straightforward estates, and contested cases stretch past two years. Your family pays the mortgage, the taxes, and the utilities on your house that entire time.

Here's your fix:

• Inventory what passes through probate. Assets titled in your name alone, with no beneficiary, go through Surrogate's Court.

• Consider a trust for the house. A properly drafted trust moves your home outside probate entirely. For families concerned about long term care costs, an irrevocable trust can also protect the home in Medicaid planning.

• Use beneficiary designations where they make sense. Transfer-on-death arrangements on financial accounts keep those assets out of court.

I tell clients from Astoria to Mill Basin the same thing: probate is a predictable expense, and predictable expenses can be reduced with planning.

Step 3: Sign the Trust, Then Actually Fund It

This mistake frustrates me more than any other, because the client did almost everything right.

They paid for a trust. They signed it. Then the deed to the house never got transferred, or the brokerage account stayed titled in their individual name. An unfunded trust is a binder on a shelf. The assets outside it still go through probate.

Here's your fix:

• Pull the deed to your home and confirm the trust is the owner of record.

• Check the title on every bank and brokerage account against your plan.

• Keep a one-page funding summary with your documents so your family knows what sits where.

In my office, funding coordination is a defined part of the estate planning process, handled with the same attention as the drafting itself. Ask whoever prepared your trust to confirm, in writing, that funding is complete.

Step 4: Update the Plan After Life Changes, Not After a Crisis

An outdated plan creates real problems. Estate disputes rarely come from a flawed document. The conflict usually stems from secrecy, outdated plans, and roles that were never clearly explained to the people involved.

I've seen this play out in Surrogate's Court in Kings and Queens counties many times. A will names a sibling who passed away years earlier. A daughter learns at the wake that her brother holds power of attorney and nobody told her why.

Here's your fix:

• Review the full plan every three years, and immediately after any marriage, divorce, birth, death, or home purchase.

• Refresh your health care proxy and power of attorney. Banks and hospitals hesitate over documents that look decades old.

• Tell your family the basics. You keep the details private if you want. Your executor, your agent, and your health care proxy should each know they were chosen and where the documents live.

A short conversation at the kitchen table prevents years of litigation. I've watched it work in both directions.

Step 5: Stop Assuming Estate Planning Is for the Wealthy

This belief is commonly held, and it costs middle class families the most.

If you own a home in Gravesend, Bayside, or Dyker Heights, you have an estate worth protecting. You spent a lifetime of hard work building it. New York's estate tax exemption sits at $7,350,000 for 2026, so most families I serve owe no estate tax at all. Their real exposure is probate cost, probate delay, long term care spend-down, and family conflict.

Those risks hit households at every income level. Planning addresses all four.

Here's your fix:

• List everything you own: the house, retirement accounts, life insurance, savings.

• Decide who gets what, who manages the process, and who speaks for you if you can't speak for yourself.

• Put those decisions into a will or trust, a power of attorney, and a health care proxy.

Education comes first in my practice. When you understand what each document does, the decisions become yours instead of your lawyer's.

Your Repair Checklist

Print this and work through it over the next month:

1. Confirm every beneficiary designation in writing, primary and contingent.

2. Identify which assets pass through probate and decide whether a trust reduces that exposure.

3. Verify your trust is funded, starting with the deed to your home.

4. Review documents after every major life event, at minimum every three years.

5. Tell your executor, agent, and health care proxy about their roles.

None of these steps require wealth. They require attention.

Where to Go From Here

I founded the Alatsas Law Firm in Sheepshead Bay because middle class families in Brooklyn and Queens deserve the same careful planning that wealthy families take for granted.

After thirty years, I can tell you the pattern holds: the families who review their plans regularly pass on more, faster, with less conflict. The families who set it and forget it pay for that decision in Surrogate's Court.

Pick one step from the checklist and complete it this week. Start with the beneficiary forms. Then keep going.

If you get stuck, or if your situation involves a blended family, a home you want protected from long term care costs, or an inheritance you want kept out of probate, sit down with an attorney who handles this work every day. Bring your documents. Ask hard questions. Your plan should reflect your wishes, and you should understand every page of it.