Sources & Further Reading

Volume 1 — Get Your Affairs in Order

Every number in this book came from somewhere, and you have a right to know where. This appendix lists the source behind each figure, chapter by chapter, so you — or your attorney, or the skeptical relative at the kitchen table — can look anything up.

Where a source is a government agency, go straight to the agency. Where it is a survey or a private company's pricing data, treat it as a good estimate of what most people encounter — not a promise about your situation.

Chapter 1 · The Shoebox Problem

• Share of American adults with a will (24 percent in 2025, down from 33 percent in 2022); reasons for putting it off; what finally prompts people to act — Caring.com, Wills and Estate Planning Study, 2024 and 2025 editions, conducted with YouGov (caring.com/resources/wills-survey)
• Hours, months, and out-of-pocket cost of settling an estate (420 hours and about five administrative calls a week from Empathy's earlier Cost of Dying research; 15 months, 18 months for executors, $12,616 total and $5,666 for the funeral from the 2024 report) — Empathy, Cost of Dying report (empathy.com/costofdying)
• Roughly $70 billion in unclaimed property held by state treasurers, and about one in seven Americans having some — National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, 2025 (unclaimed.org)
• More than $13 billion in life insurance benefits matched to families since 2016 — National Association of Insurance Commissioners, as of 2025 (naic.org; the free consumer tool is at eapps.naic.org/life-policy-locator)

Chapter 2 · The One-Hour Quick Start

• Average probate timeline of about 20 months — Trust & Will, 2024 Probate Study (trustandwill.com/learn/2024-probate-study)
• Total probate and settlement costs of 3 to 7 percent of an estate's value — AARP, Smart Guide to Estate Planning (aarp.org), corroborated by the American Bar Association's consumer materials (americanbar.org)
• Only about 29 percent of life insurance beneficiaries knowing the name of the insurance company — National Association of Insurance Commissioners consumer survey, 2020 (naic.org)

Chapter 3 · Your Will, Demystified

• 32 percent of adults with a will, and fewer than half of people in their sixties — Pew Research Center, survey of 8,750 U.S. adults, November 2025 (pewresearch.org)
• 24 percent of adults with a will — Caring.com, 2025 study (caring.com/resources/wills-survey)
• What an executor actually does — Trust & Will (trustandwill.com) and Justia (justia.com)
• Who may serve as executor, including age rules and felony disqualifications — Nolo (nolo.com)
• Executor compensation by state, including the California, Florida, and Georgia examples — EstateMin, 2025 estate-cost tracker

Chapter 4 · Trusts in Plain English

• Grantor trust treatment of a revocable living trust — Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)
• Attorney-drafted trust and full trust-based plan pricing for 2026 — LegalZoom published pricing data (legalzoom.com), cross-checked against several estate-planning firms

Chapter 5 · Powers of Attorney

• 31 percent of adults with a living will or advance directive — Pew Research Center, November 2025 survey (pewresearch.org)
• About one in three adults having any advance directive, and fewer than half of those 65 and older — Yadav et al., analysis of nearly 800,000 people, Health Affairs, 2017 (healthaffairs.org)
• Attorney pricing for individual healthcare documents and for a complete basic plan — 2025 and 2026 attorney fee surveys and published service pricing; see the Chapter 13 sources below

Chapter 7 · The Complete Asset Inventory

• Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts, life insurance, and retirement accounts skipping probate — Policygenius (policygenius.com)
• States allowing transfer-on-death deeds, including Georgia and New York adding them in 2024 — Nolo (nolo.com)

Chapter 8 · Insurance & Benefits

• Typical life insurance claim payment timelines — industry data published by Aflac (aflac.com) and MoneyGeek (moneygeek.com)
• NAIC Life Insurance Policy Locator — National Association of Insurance Commissioners (eapps.naic.org/life-policy-locator)
• $255 lump-sum death payment, who receives it, and the two-year filing deadline — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov/personal-record/when-someone-dies/lump-sum-death-payment)
• Survivor benefit percentages, including 71.5 percent at 60 rising to 100 percent at full retirement age and 75 percent for children — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov/survivor/amount)
• Burial allowances, the $441 headstone or marker allowance for deaths on or after October 1, 2025, Form 21P-530EZ, and free burial in a national cemetery — U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration (cem.va.gov/burial_benefits)

Chapter 9 · What It Costs to Die in America

• Probate costs of $15,000 to $35,000 on a $500,000 estate — Policygenius (policygenius.com) and SmartAsset (smartasset.com)
• Federal estate tax exclusion of $15 million per person for 2026, up from $13.99 million in 2025, made permanent and indexed under the law signed in July 2025 — Internal Revenue Service, "What's New — Estate and Gift Tax" (irs.gov)
• Fewer than one in a thousand estates owing federal estate tax — Tax Policy Center (taxpolicycenter.org) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (cbpp.org)
• Transfer-on-death deed availability by state — Nolo (nolo.com)

Chapter 10 · Your Digital Estate

• The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act and the states that have adopted it — Uniform Law Commission (uniformlaws.org)
• Legacy contact and memorialization settings for Facebook, and the Accounts Center path used in the setup box — Meta Help Center (facebook.com/help/1070665206293088)
• Estimated 2.3 to 3.7 million bitcoins permanently lost, roughly 11 to 18 percent of the eventual supply — Chainalysis and Glassnode figures as cited by Ledger, early 2025 (ledger.com)
• Roughly C$190 million frozen at QuadrigaCX after the death of its sole key holder — Decrypt (decrypt.co); the fuller account, including the fraud later uncovered, is in the Ontario Securities Commission's report (osc.ca/quadrigacxreport)

Chapter 11 · Your Final Wishes

• Median funeral costs of about $8,300 with viewing and burial, about $10,200 with a burial vault, and about $6,280 with cremation — National Funeral Directors Association, 2023 General Price List Study, the most recent published price study (nfda.org/news/statistics)
• Cremation at about 63 percent versus burial at about 32 percent in 2025, and the projection of about 82 percent by 2045 — National Funeral Directors Association, Cremation and Burial Report (nfda.org)
• The risks of prepaid funeral contracts and the questions to ask before signing — AARP (aarp.org) and the Federal Trade Commission's funeral guidance (consumer.ftc.gov)

Chapter 12 · The Conversation

• 27 percent of Americans never having discussed end-of-life wishes and not planning to, and more than half putting it off because it feels uncomfortable — Trust & Will, 2026 Estate Planning Report (trustandwill.com/learn/estate-planning-report-2026)
• What older parents have already discussed with adult children (68 percent funeral wishes, 66 percent medical care, 61 percent belongings), and the 83 versus 51 percent gap in will ownership by income — Pew Research Center, November 2025 survey of 8,750 adults (pewresearch.org)

Chapter 13 · DIY, Online Service, or Attorney?

• Attorney fee ranges and the finding that more than 80 percent of firms now use flat fees — LegalTemplates, 2026 survey of more than 900 law firms (legaltemplates.net)
• Online service pricing, including LegalZoom's membership tiers at roughly $25 a month or $199 a year — published pricing from LegalZoom (legalzoom.com), Trust & Will (trustandwill.com), and FreeWill (freewill.com)

Appendix · Your State at a Glance

State figures come from each state's probate code and court system, checked against the current published limits at press time. Statutory citations for every figure in those tables are included in the free companion pack at ellisfamilyguides.com/bonus, so you or your attorney can go straight to the statute.

A Closing Note on Sources

The people in this book — Eleanor, June, Gerald, Frank, and the rest — are composites: invented figures written to show a pattern that estate attorneys, hospital social workers, and probate courts see over and over. Most are labeled as such where they appear. The patterns are real, and every figure, deadline, and dollar amount in these pages is sourced above.

Volume 2 — Living Trusts Made Simple

Trust books tend to state numbers and move on. This one tells you where each number came from, chapter by chapter, so you can check anything before you act on it — and so your attorney can see you did not get your figures from a seminar mailer.

Where a source is the tax code, a federal statute, or a government agency, that is the last word, and the citation is given so you can read it yourself. Where it is a survey or a company's published pricing, treat it as a good picture of what most people encounter, not a promise about your case.

Chapter 1 · What a Living Trust Actually Is

• About 24 percent of Americans with a will and about 13 percent with a living trust — Caring.com, 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study, conducted with YouGov (caring.com/resources/wills-survey)
• Federal estate tax exclusion of $15,000,000 per person for 2026, reflecting the law signed in July 2025 — Internal Revenue Service, Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (irs.gov)
• A revocable trust being disregarded for income tax purposes while you are alive — Internal Revenue Service, grantor trust rules (irs.gov)
• Property in a revocable trust remaining available to the settlor's creditors during their lifetime, spendthrift clause or not — Uniform Trust Code, adopted in some form by most states (uniformlaws.org)

Chapter 2 · Probate: What It Really Costs and How Long It Takes

• Average probate of 20 months, the $750,000 estate example with $22,500 to $52,500 in fees, and what Americans expect probate to cost (56 percent no idea, 10 percent under $1,000, 4 percent over $10,000) — Trust & Will, 2024 Probate Study, based on 1,000 Americans surveyed in March 2024 (trustandwill.com/learn/2024-probate-study)
• Average settlement just under 16 months, about 80 percent finished within 18 months, and roughly 570 hours of executor work — EstateExec, Estate Settlement Statistics, survey of more than 1,200 executors (estateexec.com)
• State-by-state probate fee structures used in the estimate worksheet — each state's probate code and court fee schedules; see also Appendix C

Chapter 4 · Who Needs a Trust and Who Doesn't

• Probate cost and duration in Uniform Probate Code states, and the limits of joint ownership as a probate workaround — Nolo (nolo.com) and the American Bar Association's consumer materials (americanbar.org)

Chapter 5 · The Nursing Home Question

• Median nursing home cost of about $315 a day, roughly $115,000 a year — CareScout (Genworth), 2025 Cost of Care Survey (carescout.com)
• Medicaid as the primary payer for about 63 percent of nursing facility residents — KFF, nursing facility characteristics, 2025 (kff.org)
• The five-year look-back, penalty periods, the community spouse's protected share, and estate recovery — federal Medicaid law, 42 U.S.C. § 1396p (law.cornell.edu); state rules come from each state's Medicaid agency
• California's asset limit abolished in 2024 and reinstated on January 1, 2026, and New York's home-care look-back still not in effect as of mid-2026 — California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (canhr.org) and Justice in Aging (justiceinaging.org)

Chapter 7 · What It Really Costs in 2026

• Attorney pricing for a revocable living trust, flat-fee ranges, hourly rates, and the effect of geography — published 2026 attorney fee data compiled from firm pricing pages and legal cost surveys
• Trust & Will plan pricing at $499 individual and $599 couple, plus attorney support and membership add-ons — Trust & Will published pricing (trustandwill.com)
• Quicken WillMaker at $109, $149, and $219 — Nolo published pricing (willmaker.com)
• LegalZoom's $149 individual and $249 couple bundle being a will-based package, not a trust — LegalZoom published pricing (legalzoom.com)
• Warnings about living trust mills and door-to-door trust sales, and the fact that AARP endorses no trust provider — state attorneys general, the Federal Trade Commission (consumer.ftc.gov), and AARP (aarp.org)

Chapters 10 to 12 · Funding the Trust

• Deeds, recording requirements, and state-specific transfer forms such as California's Preliminary Change of Ownership Report — each county recorder's office and each state's statutes; general guidance from Nolo (nolo.com) and Deedclaim (deedclaim.com)
• The federal Garn-St Germain Act protection that keeps a lender from calling a loan when a home goes into your own revocable trust — 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3 (law.cornell.edu)
• The certification of trust, and a trustee's right to present it instead of the full trust document — Uniform Trust Code § 1013 (uniformlaws.org); account-titling practice from published custodian guidance, including Schwab (schwab.com) and Fidelity (fidelity.com)

Chapter 13 · What Stays Out: Retirement Accounts, Cars, and HSAs

• An IRA being nontransferable, so retitling it into a trust triggers a full distribution — Internal Revenue Code § 408(a) (law.cornell.edu)
• Tax consequences of a full distribution and the ten-year rule for inherited accounts — IRS Publication 590-B (irs.gov)
• The 10 percent additional tax before age 59½ and its exceptions — Internal Revenue Code § 72(t) and IRS Tax Topic 558 (irs.gov)
• Annual withdrawals required in years one through nine when the owner had already begun required minimum distributions — final IRS regulations, July 2024 (irs.gov)
• Anti-alienation protection for employer plans, which forbids assigning a 401(k) benefit at all — ERISA § 206(d) and Internal Revenue Code § 401(a)(13) (law.cornell.edu)
• HSA treatment on death — Internal Revenue Code § 223(f)(8) (law.cornell.edu)
• See-through trust requirements for retirement beneficiaries — IRS regulations under section 401(a)(9) (irs.gov)

Chapter 14 · Life Insurance, Business Interests, and Valuables

• The three-year rule when an existing policy is transferred to an irrevocable trust — Internal Revenue Code § 2035 (law.cornell.edu)
• Which trusts may hold S corporation stock, the two-year window after death, and the QSST and ESBT alternatives — Internal Revenue Code § 1361(c)(2), § 1361(d), and § 1361(e) (law.cornell.edu)
• The SSI asset limit of $2,000 and why an inheritance can end benefits — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov)
• Spousal elective share rules, which exist in most states but vary widely in how they treat trust assets — each state's probate code; overview at Nolo (nolo.com)

Chapter 15 · Living With Your Trust

• Federal estate tax exemption of $15,000,000 per person as of 2026 — Internal Revenue Service, Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (irs.gov)
• Step-up in basis at death, and the situations where it does not apply — Internal Revenue Code § 1014 (law.cornell.edu)
• State estate and inheritance taxes, which start far below the federal threshold in several states — each state's department of revenue

Chapter 16 · The Letter to Your Successor Trustee

• Applying for a trust EIN free of charge on Form SS-4 — Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)
• Successor trustee duties and the trustee's duty to account — each state's trust code, most of which follow the Uniform Trust Code (uniformlaws.org)

Appendix C · Living Trusts & Probate at a Glance

State figures come from each state's probate and trust codes, checked against the current published limits at press time, with Uniform Probate Code adoption and transfer-on-death deed availability confirmed state by state. Legal citations are collected in the free companion pack at ellisfamilyguides.com/bonus.

A Closing Note on Sources

The people in this book — Phyllis and Vernon, Carol, and the rest — are composites: invented figures built from the patterns that estate attorneys, elder law attorneys, and probate courts see repeatedly. Most are labeled as such where they appear. The patterns are real, and every figure, deadline, statute, and dollar amount in these pages is sourced above.

Volume 3 — Social Security & Medicare

This is a book full of numbers, and numbers are only as good as where they came from. This appendix names the source behind each one, grouped the way the book is, so you can check anything before you act on it — and so you can show a broker or a caseworker exactly where you got your figure.

One rule runs through everything below: for anything that decides money, the agency is the source. Social Security at ssa.gov, Medicare at medicare.gov, and your free, unbiased SHIP counselor at shiphelp.org all beat anything you read anywhere else, this book included.

Where the Yearly Numbers Come From

• The cost-of-living increase, the taxable earnings cap, credit amounts, both earnings-test limits, and the maximum benefits at 62, full retirement age, and 70 — Social Security Administration, annual COLA fact sheet (ssa.gov)
• Part A and Part B premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance amounts — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, annual premium and deductible fact sheets, published in the Federal Register each November (cms.gov)
• Part D base beneficiary premium, the legal maximum deductible, and the yearly out-of-pocket cap — CMS Part D program parameters (cms.gov), with independent cross-checks from KFF (kff.org)
• Both IRMAA tables, including the surcharge range added to the Part B premium — CMS, confirmed tier by tier against the Railroad Retirement Board's annual announcement (rrb.gov)

Chapters 1 to 3 · What You Are Owed and When

• The benefit formula, its 90, 32, and 15 percent brackets unchanged since 1979, and the yearly bend points — Social Security Administration, Office of the Chief Actuary (ssa.gov/oact/cola/piaformula.html), and POMS RS 00605.021
• Full retirement age by birth year, the reduction for claiming early, and the delayed retirement credit of two-thirds of one percent a month up to age 70 — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov)
• Spousal benefits, the reduction that applies when a spouse claims at 62, and the family maximum — Social Security Administration, program rules and published research (ssa.gov)

Chapters 4, 5, and 14 · Claiming, Spouses, and Survivors

• Survivor benefits and the survivor's own full retirement age table, which differs from the retirement table — SSA Program Operations Manual System, GN 00204.045 (secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf)
• The retirement insurance benefit limit that caps what a family receives — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov)
• Withdrawing an application within 12 months of the first month of entitlement, once in a lifetime, on Form SSA-521 — 20 CFR § 404.640 (ecfr.gov)
• The end of "file and suspend" for applications after April 29, 2016 — Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, § 831 (congress.gov)
• The Social Security Fairness Act, signed January 5, 2025 and payable for benefits after December 2023 — Public Law 118-273 (congress.gov)
• The earnings test, its $2-for-$1 and $3-for-$1 withholding, and the fact that withheld money comes back later — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov)

Chapter 12 · Taxes, Working, and Other Income

• Taxation of benefits at thresholds that have not been adjusted since 1984 — Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov) and the Social Security Administration (ssa.gov)
• The $255 lump-sum death payment, unchanged since 1954 — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov)
• Documents needed to file a retirement claim — SSA Publication 05-10035, January 2026 (ssa.gov)

Chapters 6 and 7 · The Four Parts and the Enrollment Windows

• What Parts A, B, C, and D cover, and how enrollment works — Medicare & You, the official handbook published each fall (medicare.gov)
• The initial enrollment period, the general enrollment period, and special enrollment periods, plus the rule since January 1, 2023 that coverage starts the month after you enroll — 42 CFR § 407.25 (ecfr.gov)
• Late enrollment penalties: 10 percent per full year for Part B, 10 percent for twice the number of years for Part A, and 1 percent per month of the national base beneficiary premium for Part D — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (cms.gov)
• Employer coverage that counts, and the group size that decides whether Medicare pays first — SSA Program Operations Manual System, HI 01101.020 (secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf); proof of employment is filed on CMS-L564 with CMS-40B
• The 63-day deadline after coverage ends, and the option to apply as early as 60 days before — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (cms.gov)

Chapters 8 and 9 · The Big Fork and Medigap

• Medigap standardization, the six-month open enrollment window that starts with Part B, and the different systems in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — Choosing a Medigap Policy, CMS product 02110 (medicare.gov)
• Plans C and F closed to anyone first eligible on or after January 1, 2020 — MACRA 2015 § 401, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1395ss (law.cornell.edu)

Chapters 10, 11, and 15 · Drugs, IRMAA, and the Fall Review

• The Part D coverage gap eliminated in 2025 and the new out-of-pocket cap — Inflation Reduction Act § 11201, with background in Congressional Research Service report R47396 (crsreports.congress.gov)
• Extra Help income and resource limits, and the right to change plans monthly once you qualify — Social Security Administration (ssa.gov) and Medicare (medicare.gov)
• The seven life-changing events that let you appeal an IRMAA surcharge, filed on Form SSA-44 — 20 CFR § 418.1205 (ecfr.gov)
• Nearly seven in ten people with Medicare not comparing coverage during open enrollment, and more than eight in ten in a drug-covering Advantage plan never checking their prescriptions against another plan — Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey 2022, as analyzed by KFF (kff.org)
• Medicare Advantage out-of-pocket limits, prior authorization, and the annual notice of change — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (cms.gov)

Appendix C · Questions to Ask a SHIP Counselor or Broker

• How rarely people with Medicare use a SHIP before choosing coverage, and where the SHIP contact list sits in the official handbook — Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey data and the Medicare & You handbook (medicare.gov); the national directory is at shiphelp.org

Appendix D · Your State's Rules

State Medigap protections beyond the federal minimum, birthday and anniversary rules, and each state's SHIP program come from state insurance department publications and the national SHIP directory at shiphelp.org, checked state by state at press time. Where a state's rule was unclear, the appendix says so rather than guessing.

The Forms Named in This Book

Every form mentioned is free and available directly from the agency: SSA-44 for an IRMAA appeal, SSA-521 to withdraw an application, SSA-561 to request reconsideration, SSA-632 for a waiver of an overpayment, SSA-634 for a repayment rate change, SSA-3288 to release your records, SSA-1099 for your yearly benefit statement, and CMS-40B with CMS-L564 to enroll in Part B from employer coverage. Nobody should ever charge you for one.

A Closing Note on Sources

The people in this book are composites: invented figures built from the situations that SHIP counselors and Social Security claims representatives see every week. The situations are real, and every figure, deadline, form number, and regulation in these pages is sourced above.