Everything you own will go somewhere. For parents, the default answer is built in; for the childfree, the estate plan is a blank page — which is intimidating right up until you realize it is also the most creative document you will ever write. No one is owed anything. Everything is chosen.
The mechanics come first, because dying without a will as a childfree person has a specific failure mode: state intestacy law distributes your estate up and out — spouse, then parents, then siblings, then increasingly distant relatives. Members are often startled to learn the default: the cousin you have met twice may be your legal heir, and the friend who drove you to chemotherapy inherits nothing. The chosen family that actually functions as your family is invisible to intestacy law. A will — or better, a revocable living trust, which avoids probate and handles incapacity — is how your real family gets recognized.
What members actually do with the blank page, from the accounts here: named friends and chosen family, treated exactly as heirs; nieces and nephews, often with an explicit note about what the gift is and is not; charitable bequests, from modest gifts to entire estates, sometimes structured as scholarships or donor-advised funds that outlive them; and provisions members describe with particular satisfaction — the pet trust with a named guardian and funding, the college fund for a best friend's kid, the paid-off mortgage a sister discovers only later.
Beyond the will, the checklist members converge on: beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance (these override the will, and stale ones are the most common estate mistake); a durable financial power of attorney; and the healthcare documents — proxy and advance directive — which are their own topic and arguably more urgent than the money.
One recurring piece of hard-won advice: tell people. Members who inherited a role (executor, pet guardian, beneficiary) without warning describe confusion at the worst moment. The plan works better as a conversation than a surprise.
This page reports what members did and learned; it is not legal or financial advice. The accounts below include the state, the rough year, and what they would do differently.