The questionnaire

The questionnaire is how the firm collects what your documents need: family details, fiduciary choices, assets, healthcare wishes. You answer once, and the answers feed every document in your plan, so nothing gets re-asked because it lives in a different file.

How it works

You'll receive a link by email (or find the questionnaire under Intake in the portal). If you started by leaving your details on the firm's website, an email is how the firm picks that conversation up: it takes you to the firm's contact form with what you already gave filled in, so you aren't typing your name and email a second time. The questionnaire itself opens section by section, with anything the firm already knows filled in. You don't have to finish in one sitting: your work is saved as you go, a line under the form tells you when it last saved, and coming back by the same link picks up where you left off. Saving isn't submitting, so send the form in when you're ready. Some sections only appear when they apply to you or to the documents in your plan, so don't be surprised if your spouse sees a question you didn't.

A few questions ask for a list rather than a single answer, like specific gifts you want to leave or people you'd prefer to leave out of your plan. For those you add a row per item, reorder the rows if the order matters, and remove any you change your mind about. Each entry folds down to a single line once you're finished with it, so a long list stays readable; click it to open it again.

Some of those lists are an order of service rather than a set: who acts for you first, and who steps in if they can't. Those rows are labelled 1st, 2nd, 3rd, because on them the order is the answer, and moving someone up the list is what changes who acts first. A list may open with your spouse already at the top. That's a starting point and not a decision already made for you: remove them, move them, or leave them, and the people you add come after them in the order you put them.

When you name someone to serve, such as a trustee or agent, you can include an address: street, a second address line, city, state or region, postal code, and country. These details are optional, and a partial address is fine if you do not know every part.

The same people come up more than once in an estate plan. Your daughter might be a child, a beneficiary, and a successor trustee. You only have to type someone once: after that, their name appears as a choice wherever the questionnaire asks for a person, and picking it fills in what you already told us, along with anything the firm already had on file for them. If that leaves nothing else to answer, the row folds itself down; if something is still missing, it stays open so you can finish. Typing a new name is always right there too. Choosing an existing person copies their details rather than linking the entries, so if you correct something in one place, check the others.

Where a question offers a set of choices, picking one isn't a one-way door: a clear control appears once you've answered, so a mis-click goes back to unanswered rather than becoming an answer you never meant to give.

Some questions ask for a document rather than an answer, like a deed or a beneficiary statement. You attach the file right there in the questionnaire and it goes straight to the firm, so there's no separate email to send. The file shows by name once it's attached, and you can remove it and attach a different one before you submit.

The questionnaire is yours by invitation: it opens through the link your firm sent you, or from Intake in the portal, and its web address on its own won't open it for a stranger. If your link has lapsed, the page it lands on lets you send yourself a new one, and the replacement opens the same questionnaire rather than the portal home.

Sometimes a questionnaire isn't about you. If your firm is preparing documents for a parent or another family member as part of your engagement, you may be asked to complete a questionnaire about them. It says so at the top, Answering about and their name, your Intake list marks the task as about them too, and every question inside it is asking about that person rather than about you. Your own questionnaire, if you have one, stays separate.

For couples

You each have your own questionnaire. Personal choices, like who serves as your healthcare agent, are genuinely yours to make, and the firm needs both of you before it can draft. You can work on them at the same time without undoing each other's answers.

Facts about the two of you rather than about either of you, like whether you're married and to whom, are asked once. Whoever gets there first answers them, and the other of you isn't asked to agree with something you already said together. Where your spouse has already answered something the firm can reasonably carry across, like your address, you'll find it filled in with a note saying where it came from. Leave it as it is if it's right, or change it, in which case the note goes away and the firm sees the correction. If the two of you say different things, nobody's answer is quietly overwritten; the firm sorts it out with you.

Either of you can fill in the other's questionnaire. When you finish yours, you'll be offered your spouse's; you'll also see it on their outstanding task in the portal. It works in both directions, so whoever is the one who sits down and does paperwork can do it for both of you. Your spouse can still open their own questionnaire afterwards, and until they send it in you can go back and change what you entered. Once they submit, that's theirs. What they'll see in the meantime is an invitation to look over what you entered on their behalf, not an empty list that makes it look like nothing happened.

If the two of you share one email address, signing in shows you both sets of questions, the same as it always has. Either way the form names whose answers you're giving, and the firm can see who actually typed them. Answer on your spouse's behalf only if that's what the two of you intend. You'll also see some of your spouse's answers alongside your own for context; those are marked as theirs and aren't yours to change.

Neither of you is ever asked to type the other's email address. Whatever the firm has on file is what gets used, and if it's wrong the firm is the one to fix it.

After you submit

Your answers go to the firm for review: a person looks at every change before it becomes part of your record, and the firm follows up where something needs clarifying. If you realize you need to correct something after submitting, reopen the questionnaire from the same link or task and send the update; it goes through the same review.

If your questionnaire is sitting unfinished, the firm may have the platform send you a reminder or two. It stops as soon as you send the form in, and you can always just answer it in person instead: firms often work through the questions with a client directly and fill the form in on their side, which clears the task the same way.