You need to make the decision to create an estate plan and then you need to gather facts.

In order to create an estate plan, you need to know what you need in order to organize your affairs, according to The Daily Courier in "I'm dead. Now What?"

These steps include:

• Gathering all your important financial documents in one place. This includes all of your bank account information, your retirement account documents, your regular bills and anything else that is important. Make sure that someone in your family knows where to find everything.
• If you want to make sure your family gets the pieces of your property they want and that they will not fight unnecessarily over things, talk to your family members about any possessions of yours that they treasure and make a list of who wants what possession.
• Since you have your financial documents in one place and you know who wants what, it will now be easier for you to go to an estate planning attorney to formalize your wishes concerning your estate. While you are at the attorney's office, make sure that you also get power of attorney documents.
• Finally, you should make arrangements for your own funeral, so your family will not need to worry about making them while they are grieving you.

Reference: The Daily Caller (Jan. 11, 2018) "I'm dead. Now What?"