Estate Planning in Michigan: Wills, Trusts, and Probate

Estate planning is the process of deciding who manages your affairs if you cannot, and who receives your property after death. In Michigan, most of these rules live in one statute, the Estates and Protected Individuals Code (EPIC), with powers of attorney now governed by a separate 2024 law. This reference explains the documents a Michigan plan usually contains, how each one is signed to be valid, how trusts and deeds keep property out of probate, and what happens under state law when someone dies without a plan. It covers the framework; the linked articles below walk through each specific procedure.

What estate planning covers in Michigan

A Michigan estate plan addresses two separate questions. The first is management during life: who pays bills, files taxes, and makes medical decisions if illness or injury leaves a person unable to act. The second is distribution at death: who inherits the house, the accounts, and personal belongings, and who is in charge of carrying that out.

EPIC is the backbone. It defines how wills are made, how trusts are administered, how estates pass when there is no will, and how probate courts supervise the process. Powers of attorney used to sit inside EPIC as well, but Michigan moved them into the Uniform Power of Attorney Act effective July 1, 2024, under MCL 556.201. Health care decision-making stays in EPIC through the patient advocate designation.

Not every asset passes under a will. Property held jointly with rights of survivorship, life insurance, retirement accounts, and payable-on-death accounts pass directly to the named survivor or beneficiary, outside probate and outside the will. A complete plan accounts for both the probate estate and these non-probate transfers so the two do not contradict each other.

The core documents and who they name

Most Michigan plans are built from a small set of documents, each naming a person to act in a defined role.

• A will names a personal representative (the person who settles the estate) and states who inherits. It takes effect only at death.
• A revocable living trust holds assets during life and distributes them at death without probate. The person who creates it is the settlor; a trustee manages it.
• A durable power of attorney for finances names an agent to handle money matters if the person becomes incapacitated.
• A patient advocate designation names someone to make medical and mental-health decisions when the patient cannot participate in them.

The word “durable” matters. A power of attorney that is not durable ends the moment the person who signed it loses capacity, which is exactly when it is needed most. Michigan agents named in a properly executed power of attorney under the Uniform Power of Attorney Act keep their authority through incapacity.

Choosing the people is often harder than choosing the documents. The same person can serve in more than one role, and each role can name a backup. A plan that names only one agent, with no successor, fails if that single person dies first or declines to serve.

How Michigan wills are executed

Michigan recognizes two kinds of valid wills. The common form is a witnessed will. Under MCL 700.2502, a witnessed will must be in writing, signed by the person making it (the testator), and signed by at least two witnesses, each of whom witnessed either the signing or the testator’s acknowledgment of the signature within a reasonable time. Michigan does not require a will to be notarized to be valid.

The second form is a holographic will. Under the same section, a will that is not witnessed is still valid if it is dated and the testator’s signature and the document’s material portions are in the testator’s own handwriting. A handwritten, dated, signed will is enforceable in Michigan even with no witnesses at all.

A will has real limits. It cannot control property that passes by beneficiary designation or survivorship, it does nothing until death, and it must go through probate to take effect. Those limits are the main reason many Michigan plans add a trust.

Powers of attorney and health care decisions

Two documents handle decisions during life, and Michigan splits them between finances and health care.

For finances, the Uniform Power of Attorney Act, effective July 1, 2024, governs how a durable financial power of attorney is created and what an agent may do. The act replaced the older EPIC provisions and sets default rules on an agent’s duties, when the authority starts, and how third parties such as banks must treat the document. A financial agent can pay bills, manage accounts, and handle property, but only within the authority the document grants.

For health care, Michigan uses the patient advocate designation under MCL 700.5506. A person 18 or older who is of sound mind may name a patient advocate to make medical and mental-health decisions. The designation must be in writing, signed, dated, and signed by two witnesses, and the witnesses cannot be the patient’s spouse, parent, child, grandchild, sibling, presumptive heir, physician, or the patient advocate. The advocate’s authority becomes exercisable only when the patient’s attending physician determines the patient can no longer participate in treatment decisions.

Trusts, deeds, and avoiding probate

Probate is the court process that transfers a decedent’s assets and confirms the personal representative’s authority. It is public, takes months, and carries filing and publication costs. Much of Michigan estate planning is about moving assets out of that process.

A revocable living trust is the most common tool. Assets titled in the name of the trust are managed by the trustee during life and distributed by the trustee at death, with no probate case for those assets. The trust is revocable, so the settlor can change or cancel it at any time while competent. A trust only avoids probate for the assets actually retitled into it; an unfunded trust controls nothing.

Michigan also recognizes the “ladybird” deed, an enhanced life estate deed that lets an owner keep full control of real estate during life, including the right to sell, while naming who receives the property at death. Because the transfer happens automatically at death, the property skips probate. Beneficiary designations and jointly titled accounts do the same job for financial assets. These transfers move fast and stay private, but they override the will, so they have to be coordinated with it.

What Michigan law does when there is no plan

When a Michigan resident dies without a will, the estate passes by intestate succession under EPIC. The statute, not the family, decides who inherits and in what shares.

The surviving spouse’s share depends on who else survives. Under MCL 700.2102, a spouse takes the entire intestate estate when the decedent leaves no descendant and no parent. When the decedent leaves descendants who are all also the spouse’s descendants, the spouse takes a base amount plus half the rest; the base figure is $150,000 as written in the statute and is adjusted for inflation each year. Different base amounts and fractions apply when there are stepchildren, a surviving parent, or descendants who are not the spouse’s. Whatever the spouse does not take passes to descendants, then parents, then more distant relatives, in the order the statute sets.

Intestacy also reaches results many people would not choose. An unmarried partner inherits nothing. Minor children can inherit outright at 18 with no trust to manage the money. A will or trust exists precisely to replace these default rules with the decedent’s own choices.

Probate and small-estate options

When probate is required, Michigan offers a full process and two simplified paths for smaller estates, all administered by the county probate court. The State Court Administrative Office publishes the required forms in its estates and trusts probate forms set, including the applications to open an estate and appoint a personal representative.

For small estates, MCL 700.3982 lets the court order property turned over to the surviving spouse or heirs when, after funeral and burial expenses, the balance of the estate is worth $50,000 or less. That figure is a statutory base adjusted for inflation. An heir who receives property this way stays responsible for the decedent’s unpaid debts, up to the value received, for 63 days after the order. A separate affidavit procedure (form PC 598) allows a successor to collect certain assets without opening a full estate at all.

Full probate applies when the estate is larger or contested. It can run as informal, unsupervised administration handled largely by the personal representative, or as supervised administration with closer court involvement when heirs disagree or the situation is complex.

Taxes on a Michigan estate

Michigan is not a death-tax state for current deaths. The state repealed its estate tax, and its inheritance tax reaches only property inherited from a person who died on or before September 30, 1993, according to the Michigan Department of Treasury’s inheritance tax guidance. For anyone dying today, there is no Michigan estate or inheritance tax to plan around.

Federal estate tax is a separate question and applies only to very large estates above the federal exemption, which sits in the millions of dollars per person. Most Michigan estates owe no federal estate tax. Planning for the federal tax matters only for high-net-worth estates, and the rules there change with federal law rather than state law.