The Complete Guide to Estate Planning in Washington

You have been meaning to do this for years. Maybe a friend’s father died last spring without a will and the family is still untangling it. Maybe you refinanced the house in Lake Stevens and saw, in writing, what it is worth now. Maybe a second child arrived and it occurred to you that if something happened to both of you next week, a judge who has never met your family would decide who raises them.

So you opened a browser tab, and the tab is still open. Washington runs on its own rules, and they are not the ones most articles describe. Your will needs two witnesses. Your power of attorney is worthless the moment you lose capacity unless it says otherwise in so many words. Your estate can owe Washington tax starting at $3 million even though the federal government ignores everything under $15 million.

Underneath the rules sits the reason the folder is still empty, and it is not laziness. Every guide you find reads like it is about dying, and you would rather think about almost anything else. That framing is the problem. An estate plan is not a document about your death. It is a set of instructions that spares the people you love from guessing, arguing, and paying for your silence at the worst possible moment.

A Washington estate plan rests on four documents: a will, a durable power of attorney for finances, a health care directive that names a health care agent, and, for some families, a trust. Most Washington estates owe no state estate tax, but the state threshold sits at $3,000,000 for deaths on or after July 1, 2026, which is far below the federal exclusion. Washington also gives married couples no spousal portability, so a plan that works in most states can leave money on the table here.

If the paperwork feels like the hard part, that reaction is nearly universal. Nicole Franklin sits down with Snohomish County families every week who arrive with a grocery bag of documents, a will signed in another state in 1998, and no idea which pages still mean anything. Almost none of them find the process as grim as they expected. The estate planning attorneys in Everett at Anderson Hunter have handled this work in the same county since 1893, and the firm is now the largest private law firm in Snohomish County. The value of that is not history. It is that your personal representative will file in the same courthouse your attorney appears in every month.

What This Guide Covers

1. The four documents in a Washington estate plan
2. Whether you need a will or a trust
3. How Washington probate actually works
4. Who owes Washington estate tax in 2026, and how to reduce exposure
5. Choosing a guardian for your minor children
6. Planning for incapacity
7. When to update your plan

What Documents Does a Washington Estate Plan Actually Include?

A working Washington estate plan needs four documents, and a fifth thing that is not a document at all. Most people believe a will covers everything. A will does nothing until you die, which leaves the harder half of the problem, the years when you are alive but cannot sign your own name, completely unaddressed.

Durable power of attorney: A written authorization letting someone you choose (your agent) handle your finances if you cannot. The word durable matters: in Washington, the authority ends the moment you become incapacitated unless the document expressly says it survives your disability.

1. A will. Your will names who receives what, who serves as your personal representative, and who becomes guardian of your minor children. Any Washington resident of sound mind who is at least 18 can make one. Under RCW 11.12.020, it must be in writing, signed by you, and attested by two or more competent witnesses. Washington does not recognize a purely handwritten, unwitnessed will, no matter how clearly it states your wishes.

2. A durable power of attorney for finances. This is the document that keeps your household running if you have a stroke in March and are not yourself again until August. Someone has to pay the mortgage, deal with the insurer, and talk to the bank. Under RCW 11.125.040, Washington does not make a power of attorney durable by default, so the document has to state plainly that the authority is not affected by your disability. Get that sentence wrong and the document fails exactly when you need it. For more on how this piece fits the rest, see how a power of attorney fits into your estate plan.

3. A health care directive and a named health care agent. Two related jobs: recording what treatment you would want if you were in a terminal condition or a permanent unconscious state, and naming a person who can make medical decisions when you cannot speak. The directive is governed by RCW 70.122.030. Naming the person matters more than most people expect, because it decides who the hospital talks to at two in the morning. Our guide to the health care directive walks through the choices in detail.

4. A trust, if your situation calls for one. Trusts are useful tools and they are also oversold. The next section covers when one earns its cost in Washington and when it does not.

5. Your beneficiary designations. This is the fifth thing, and it is where plans quietly break. Retirement accounts, life insurance, payable-on-death accounts and transfer-on-death deeds pass by contract, outside your will. A form naming an ex-spouse overrides the will you signed last month. Pull every designation and read it.

Signing Matters as Much as Drafting

Washington sets different execution rules for different documents, which is why do-it-yourself packets fail so often. A will needs two competent witnesses. A power of attorney, under RCW 11.125.050, needs either a notary acknowledgment or two competent witnesses, and those witnesses cannot be your home care provider, a care provider where you live, or anyone related to you or your agent by blood, marriage, or state registered domestic partnership. Notarization is the better choice, because banks accept a notarized document with far less friction. A health care directive needs a notary or two witnesses who are not related to you and not in line to inherit from you.

Do You Need a Will or a Trust in Washington?

Most Washington families do not need a revocable living trust. That answer surprises people who have read national advice, and the reason is local: Washington probate is unusually inexpensive and unintrusive compared with states like California and Florida, where the horror stories that sell trusts originate.

The mechanism is nonintervention powers. Under RCW 11.68.011, a personal representative of a solvent estate can petition for authority to administer the estate without routine court supervision. Once granted, they sell the house, pay the bills, and distribute the assets without going back to a judge for permission each time. For a straightforward Snohomish County estate, that turns probate into an administrative task rather than a litigation event.

So when does a trust earn its cost here? Six situations come up repeatedly:

• You own real property in another state. A cabin in Idaho or a condo in Arizona can trigger a separate probate there. Titling it to a trust avoids that.
• You have a blended family. If you want your spouse supported for life and your children from a first marriage protected afterward, a trust does what outright gifts and a community property agreement cannot.
• A beneficiary has a disability. A properly drafted special needs trust preserves eligibility for Apple Health and other means-tested benefits that an inheritance would otherwise disqualify.
• Privacy matters to you. A will filed with the court is public. Trust terms are not.
• You want a plan for gradual incapacity. A successor trustee can manage trust assets without any court involvement and without a bank second-guessing a power of attorney.
• You are a married couple near the state tax threshold. This is the big one in Washington, and the next section explains why.

If you are weighing the two, our comparison of wills against trusts goes deeper on the mechanics.

How Does Probate Work in Washington?

A Washington probate takes a minimum of four months and more commonly six to twelve. The floor is not due to court backlog. It is a deliberate waiting period that protects the estate from creditors who surface later.

Probate: The court-supervised process of proving a will, appointing someone to act for the estate, paying valid debts and taxes, and transferring what is left to the people entitled to it. In Snohomish County it is filed in Superior Court in Everett.

The sequence looks like this:

1. File the will and petition the court. The will and a petition for probate and letters testamentary go to Snohomish County Superior Court. The court appoints your named personal representative and issues letters proving their authority.
2. Petition for nonintervention powers. For a solvent estate, this is usually granted and it removes the need for routine court approval on individual transactions.
3. Notify heirs, beneficiaries and creditors. Notice goes to the people named in the will and to the heirs at law. The personal representative publishes a notice to creditors in a county legal newspaper and mails it to known creditors.
4. Wait out the creditor window. This is the four months, and it is the reason probate has real value.
5. Inventory, pay and file. Assets are identified and valued, debts and final expenses are paid in statutory priority, the final income tax returns are filed, and a Washington estate tax return is filed if the estate is over the threshold.
6. Distribute and close. What remains goes to the beneficiaries and the personal representative closes the estate.

The creditor timing is worth understanding precisely, because it decides when the family can actually be paid. Under RCW 11.40.051, a creditor who was not reasonably ascertainable must present a claim within four months after the date of first publication of the notice. A creditor who received direct notice has until the later of that four months or 30 days after service. If no notice is published or given at all, the window stretches to 24 months from the date of death. Publishing notice is what converts an open-ended risk into a closed door, and it is the single strongest argument for opening a probate you might otherwise skip. If you are wondering how this is paid for, see who pays probate attorney fees.

When You Can Skip Probate

Two shortcuts exist. Under RCW 11.62.010, a successor can collect personal property by affidavit if the estate subject to probate does not exceed $100,000, at least 40 days have passed since the death, no personal representative has been appointed, and the debts including funeral expenses have been paid or provided for. It works for bank accounts and similar personal property, not for real estate.

The second is a community property agreement under RCW 26.16.120, which vests everything in the surviving spouse or domestic partner automatically at the first death. It is cheap and it does avoid probate, which is why it is so common here. It also carries costs that rarely get mentioned: you lose the four-month creditor cutoff, everything lands outright in the survivor’s hands with no protection for children from a prior marriage, and it can defeat the credit shelter planning described below by pushing the whole combined estate into one taxable estate at the second death. For a modest estate and one marriage it can be the right tool. Near the state tax threshold, or in a blended family, it is frequently the wrong one.

Anderson Hunter handles probate administration in Snohomish County on both sides of this, which is why the planning advice tends to be shaped by what actually goes wrong later.

Who Owes Washington Estate Tax in 2026?

For deaths on or after July 1, 2026, a Washington estate tax return is required when the gross value of the estate exceeds $3,000,000, and tax is owed on the amount above that after allowable deductions. Most estates fall well under it and owe nothing. The trouble is that a paid-off house in Edmonds or Mill Creek, a retirement account, and a life insurance policy add up faster than people expect, and life insurance you own is counted in your gross estate even though your family never sees it as wealth.

The legislature changed this twice in twelve months, so the date of death controls which rules apply:

Rates are graduated, starting at 10% on the first $1,000,000 of the Washington taxable estate and climbing from there. The return and any payment are due nine months after the date of death. A six-month filing extension is available, but it does not stop interest from accruing on unpaid tax. Current figures and the full rate schedule live on the Washington Department of Revenue estate tax pages, and they are subject to legislative and annual inflation adjustment, so confirm them against the date of death in your own case rather than relying on any article, including this one.

Washington runs its tax entirely separately from the federal system. The federal basic exclusion is $15,000,000 per person for 2026, so a family can owe Washington a substantial amount while owing the federal government nothing at all. That gap between $3,000,000 and $15,000,000 is where a great many Snohomish County homeowners now sit.

The Portability Trap for Married Couples

Here is the detail that costs Washington families the most money. Federal law lets a surviving spouse use a deceased spouse’s unused exclusion. Washington does not. There is no spousal portability at the state level, which means a Washington exclusion that goes unused at the first death is simply gone.

The practical consequence: a married couple with a $5,000,000 combined estate who leave everything outright to each other, or who rely on a community property agreement, may use only one $3,000,000 exclusion instead of two. A properly drafted credit shelter trust, sometimes called a bypass trust, captures the first spouse’s exclusion while still supporting the survivor. Other tools that come up are lifetime gifting, since Washington has no gift tax, holding life insurance outside your taxable estate, the qualified family-owned business interest deduction and the farm deduction for the families they fit, and charitable gifts. Which combination applies depends on your assets and your family, and this is genuinely one of the areas where a plan drafted for another state can do real damage here.

Not sure which side of the threshold you are on? That is a one-meeting question, and the answer changes what the rest of your plan should look like. Call (425) 252-5161 to speak with the estate planning team.

How Do You Choose a Guardian for Your Minor Children?

You choose by naming the person in your will, and Washington law gives that nomination real weight. Under RCW 11.130.215, when a court appoints a guardian for a minor it must appoint the person nominated by a parent in a probated will or other signed record, unless the court finds the appointment contrary to the child’s best interest. Your nomination is not a suggestion the court weighs against other candidates. It is the starting point, and someone would have to show why it should be set aside.

Without a nomination, a judge chooses from whoever comes forward, sometimes with competing petitions from both sides of the family, all of it litigated while your children are already grieving. Naming someone is the single highest-value thing a parent of young children can do in an afternoon.

Four things worth thinking through before you decide:

• Name a first choice and at least one backup. People move, get sick, and change circumstances. A single name is a plan with one point of failure.
• Separate the raising from the money. The aunt your children adore may be the right person to raise them and the wrong person to manage a $700,000 life insurance payout for fifteen years. Naming a different trustee for a trust holding their inheritance is normal and not an insult.
• Think about geography and stability honestly. Would the children move states, change schools, leave their friends? Sometimes that is worth it for the right person, and sometimes the second choice is really the first.
• Ask them first. Guardianship is a fifteen-year commitment. Discovering it in a will reading is not the way anyone should learn about it.

You can also nominate a guardian in a power of attorney under RCW 11.125.410, which covers the gap in which you are alive but incapacitated rather than deceased. Where guardianship overlaps with an existing parenting plan or a custody dispute, our family law team works alongside the estate planning group so the two sets of documents do not contradict each other.

What Happens If You Become Incapacitated Without a Plan?

Someone has to go to court. If you cannot manage your finances or make medical decisions and you signed no durable power of attorney and no health care directive, a family member petitions Snohomish County Superior Court for a guardianship or conservatorship under chapter 11.130 RCW.

That process is slower, costlier, and far more public than the alternative. It involves a petition, notice to a statutory list of relatives, an attorney or court visitor appointed for you, criminal background checks on proposed guardians and adult members of their household, a hearing, and ongoing court reporting for as long as it lasts. Meanwhile the mortgage is due, the insurer wants a signature, and no one has authority to give one. Families usually discover the gap in a hospital corridor, which is the worst place to learn about it.

Two documents you can sign in a single appointment prevent nearly all of it. A durable power of attorney puts a person you trust in charge of your finances immediately, with no court, no filing fee, and no stranger reviewing your family. A health care directive with a named health care agent does the same for medical decisions and tells your family what you would have wanted, which spares them from having to guess and then live with the guess.

When Should You Update Your Estate Plan?

Review your plan every three to five years, and immediately after any of the following. Estate plans do not usually fail because they were badly drafted. They fail because they were drafted correctly in 2009 and nobody looked at them again.

• You marry, divorce, or register a domestic partnership
• A child or grandchild is born or adopted
• Someone named in your documents dies, becomes ill, or stops being someone you would trust with this
• You move to or from Washington, since execution rules and tax exposure both change at the state line
• You buy or sell real property, especially in another state
• You start, sell, or restructure a business
• Your net worth moves meaningfully toward or past the state estate tax threshold
• A beneficiary develops a disability, an addiction, or a creditor problem
• You inherit money, or you receive a settlement
• The law changes, which in Washington it just did, twice

That last one deserves attention this year. The state exclusion moved from $2,193,000 to $3,000,000 in mid-2025; the top rate jumped to 35% and then reverted to 20% on July 1, 2026; and the Department of Revenue has flagged that the exclusion is not currently set to rise with inflation going forward because of an expired reference in the statute. If your plan was built around the old $2,193,000 figure, the arithmetic underneath it has changed. Add your digital assets to the same review, since account access is now a routine problem for personal representatives.

What Happens If You Die Without an Estate Plan in Washington?

Washington writes the plan for you, and it writes the same one for everybody. Under the intestacy statute, RCW 11.04.015, your property passes by a fixed formula: your surviving spouse or domestic partner takes all of the community property plus a share of your separate property that depends on whether you left children, parents, or siblings. No allowance is made for the stepchild you raised, the sibling who needs help, the child who does not handle money well, or the charity you supported for thirty years.

If you had minor children, a judge selects their guardian from whoever petitions. If you become incapacitated first, your family goes to court for authority they could have had from a signed form. None of this is catastrophic in every case, and plenty of intestate estates end up roughly where the family expected. But every one of them costs more, takes longer, and asks grieving people to make decisions you could have made for them.

How Anderson Hunter Helps Washington Families

Nobody arrives at this feeling organized. Most of the people Nicole Franklin meets have been meaning to do this for years, and they usually apologize for waiting, which is unnecessary. A first meeting is mostly listening: who is in your family, what you own, what worries you at three in the morning. The documents follow from that, and for most families, the whole thing is finished in a few weeks.

Most of the firm’s attorneys live here too, in Everett, Mukilteo, Mill Creek, Edmonds, and on Whidbey Island. Your personal representative will file in the courthouse a few blocks from this office, and your attorney will have handled the probate side of exactly the mistakes the planning side is built to prevent. Because the firm also covers family law, real estate, business, and tax, a plan touching a rental in Marysville or a family business in Monroe does not require a committee of strangers.

Every situation is different and no one can promise you a particular outcome. What a finished plan delivers is narrower and more useful than a promise: your spouse knows what to do. Your children are raised by the person you chose. Your business keeps running. Nobody hires a lawyer to fight a sibling over what you probably would have wanted, because you already said. That is a better afternoon’s work than almost anything else on your list.

Want to keep reading first? Start with our comparison of wills against trusts, then how a power of attorney fits into your estate plan. Both are short, and both cover the two questions people ask most before they call.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a lawyer to make a will in Washington?

No. Washington does not require an attorney, and a will you draft yourself can be valid if it meets RCW 11.12.020. The risk is not validity, it is the gap between a valid document and a plan that works. Online packets routinely miss the durability language in a power of attorney, ignore beneficiary designations, and say nothing about the state estate tax threshold.

Is a handwritten will valid in Washington?

Generally no. Washington does not recognize holographic wills, so a handwritten document signed only by you is not enforceable. Under RCW 11.12.020 it must be in writing, signed by you, and attested by two or more competent witnesses. Handwriting is fine if those signing requirements are met, but handwriting alone is not enough.

Does a community property agreement replace a will?

No, and treating it as a substitute causes problems. It moves everything to your surviving spouse at the first death, but says nothing about what happens after that, names no guardian, and appoints no personal representative. It also gives up the four-month creditor cutoff and can waste one spouse’s state exclusion. Most couples who use one should still have a will.

Can I avoid probate in Washington?

Often, through some combination of a community property agreement, beneficiary designations, joint titling, transfer-on-death deeds, a small estate affidavit under RCW 11.62.010, or a funded revocable trust. Whether you should is a separate question. Probate here is comparatively cheap, and published notice to creditors buys a four-month cutoff that non-probate transfers do not provide.

Does Washington have an inheritance tax?

No. Washington has an estate tax, paid by the estate before assets are distributed, and no separate inheritance tax on the people who receive the money. If you inherit from a Washington estate, you owe no Washington tax on what you receive.

How long does probate take in Washington?

Four months at the absolute minimum, because of the creditor claim period, and more typically six to twelve months for an uncomplicated estate. Real estate to sell, a business interest, an estate tax return, or a disagreement among beneficiaries all extend it. Contested estates can run for years.

What happens to my online accounts and digital files?

Without instructions, your personal representative may be locked out entirely, since terms of service and federal privacy law can block access even for a court-appointed representative. Your plan should grant explicit authority over digital assets, and you should set up the legacy contact or inheritance tools that Apple, Google, and others now offer.

Can I change my will after I sign it?

Yes, at any time while you have capacity. Small changes can be made by a codicil, executed with the same formalities as a will, but replacing the will outright is usually cleaner. Never edit a signed will by hand; handwritten alterations invite exactly the dispute you signed the document to prevent.

Ready to protect your family’s future? Call (425) 252-5161, or start smaller with our complete comparison of wills against trusts and our guide to the health care directive before you call.