A lasagna recipe includes a few different components: the ingredients needed to make the dish, how much of each ingredient you need, and the steps you have to take to transform the ingredients into a dish. Without the steps, the ingredients are just ingredients—they don’t create anything. Estate planning is similar. Your estate plan is the recipe, and the documents are the ingredients. A will or trust may be the pasta or the sauce, but they aren’t the lasagna. Sure, they’re necessary components of the lasagna, but without the other ingredients and steps, they’re just pasta and sauce. Same with estate planning. If you just create a will or trust, you have documents that are just documents. They don’t do anything by themselves…