Personal estate plans that reflect yours and your loved ones’ needs can help ease financial burdens for them in the future. New guidance from the IRS takes both yours and your spouse’s estate tax exemptions into consideration, allowing for the option to elect “portability” of your exemptions in certain cases. This opportunity can help to alleviate financial stress for those who have unfortunately lost a spouse, but its implementation is time sensitive, so it’s important to know how and when to act.

Because few people want to think about the circumstances where their estate plan would come into play, even fewer think about the consequences if their estate plan may not be able to be carried out as they wished. This most frequently occurs in the event that designated individuals are unable to perform the duties allotted to them. Here are a few of the roles for which you should designate a back-up in your estate plan—and what could happen if you don’t.

Even in our technology-centric world, people’s estate plans often only account for “traditional” assets, like a car, checking account, house, etc., for example. More and more, however, an individual owns digital assets as well. With this in mind, a reasonable person would then ask: how do you build a strategy for your legacy that ensures your “virtual”—but still very real—assets are also protected?

As an estate planning attorney, I often receive calls from individuals who have just been designated as a personal representative and are wondering what they are legally required to do. Personal representatives may either be named an Executor (Executrix if the individual is female) or an Administrator (Administratrix if female). An Executor is the person whom a decedent named in his or her Will to be in charge of the administration of his or her estate. An Administrator is the person appointed by the court to be in charge of the estate when someone dies without a Last Will and Testament.

Traditional estate plans generally consist of a will and other documents that are meant to provide a map for fulfilling the wishes of the individual both before and after death. There are times, though, when an estate may be better served by other estate planning vehicles such as a revocable living trust, which can provide flexibility, privacy and ease of administration. These types of trusts are becoming popular and should be afforded due consideration when planning an estate.

An estate plan is designed to ensure a smooth transition of assets from a decedent to beneficiaries, as well as minimizing expenses, fees, and taxes associated with the transfer. Most estate planners may be concerned with the transfer of real property and other substantial assets, but what may be overlooked is the way in which a decedent’s firearms are accounted for. Failure to properly account for these items may produce unwanted results, all the way up to excessive fines and even prison time.

As digital assets become more and more ubiquitous, they are increasingly becoming a headache for representatives of an estate and other fiduciaries acting on behalf of an incapacitated principal. This growing problem manifests itself in several ways, such as when a decedent elected to receive important documents such as tax documents, bills and bank statements electronically; created automatic and recurring payments online; or owned valuable online assets such as electronic currency, domain names or other digital property. Fiduciaries face a myriad of problems in accessing these items as transactions occur more and more in the digital realm. In 2014, the Uniform Law Commission – a group of lawyers, judges, legislators and academics charged with promoting uniformity across state laws where it is practical – tackled the problem head-on with the approval of the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (“UFADAA” or “the Act”). The road to enactment of this uniform law, however, has been bumpy at best.