Once your personal wishes are written down, the next gift you can give your family is clarity about money — what you have, where it lives, and what you owe. Families rarely struggle to find the accounts they know about. They struggle with the old 401(k) from a job twenty years ago, the savings bond in a drawer, or the account opened "just in case" that everyone forgot existed. A few hours of organizing now can save your executor months of searching later, and it protects money that would otherwise sit unclaimed indefinitely.

Make a list of every job you've ever had and check whether a retirement account was left behind. Search your state's unclaimed property office and the free, state-endorsed site missingmoney.com for forgotten bank accounts, uncashed checks, or old insurance policies. Billions of dollars sit unclaimed nationwide simply because no one remembered an account existed or an heir couldn't be located.

Once you've found everything, consider consolidating scattered accounts into fewer, clearly titled ones while you're still able to sign the paperwork yourself. Fewer accounts means fewer statements to track, fewer login credentials to record, and a far simpler estate to settle.

Create a single document listing every account and where it's held, every debt and its balance, every insurance policy, and how your home and major assets are titled. Add contact information for your advisor, CPA, and attorney, and note where your key documents are physically kept. You don't need to list passwords — just where they're stored. To help you get started, we offer a Financial Documents/Asset List Template, free to download at millerwm.com/downloadable-resources. Give a copy to your executor or trusted family member, and update it any time something changes.

Adding an adult child's name to your house deed, or to an investment account, feels like a simple way to make things easier later. In practice, it often creates more problems than it solves. The moment you sign, it's treated as a gift, and gifts of that size can require a tax filing. The asset is also now exposed to your child's creditors, lawsuits, or divorce. And because jointly titled assets skip the will entirely, this move can quietly cut out your other children.

There's a tax cost too. Assets your child inherits normally get a "step-up" in value for tax purposes, based on what they're worth on the day you pass away. Assets you add your child to while you're alive don't get that reset. Your child could face a much bigger tax bill when they eventually sell.

If your real goal is simply avoiding probate, ask your estate attorney about a transfer-on-death deed, a beneficiary designation, or a revocable living trust instead. Each one skips probate without any of these downsides.

Credit card debt doesn't disappear when someone dies. Generally, it's paid out of whatever money and property is left in the estate. If the estate can't cover it, the debt usually goes unpaid — it doesn't automatically become your children's or other heirs' responsibility just because they're family.

You're only personally on the hook for someone else's debt in a few specific cases: you co-signed the loan, you're a joint account holder (this is different from being an authorized user, who owes nothing), your state's law requires spouses to cover certain debts, or you live in a community property state that requires spouses to use shared property to pay a deceased spouse's debts. Arizona is one of these states, along with Alaska, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.

If you're a surviving spouse or handling the estate, debt collectors may still contact you — that's allowed. What isn't allowed is a collector telling you that you personally owe the debt when you don't, or harassing you about it. Notify card issuers promptly after a death, and check with your estate attorney before paying anything from your own funds.