Estate Planning
Estate questions test titling, beneficiary designations, transfer strategies, incapacity documents, gift and estate tax, GST, liquidity, trusts, marital deduction, business transfer, postmortem planning, and special circumstances.
How to study for the CFP exam
Use CFP Board's eight-domain blueprint as your map: connect conduct and fiduciary duties to planning process, then layer in calculations, tax, investments, risk management, retirement, estate, and client psychology.
Core concepts
Concept 1
Estate Planning questions reward the answer that follows the official source, the professional role, and the stated facts.
Exam cue: Identify the candidate role, client or public risk, source rule, calculation, or process step being tested.
Concept 2
The strongest answer identifies the rule, safety concern, ethical duty, calculation, client factor, or process step before acting.
Exam cue: Check whether the fact pattern is using a national standard, jurisdiction rule, handbook policy, or scenario-specific instruction.
Concept 3
Eliminate answers that ignore requirements, skip documentation, overreach the role, or treat convenience as the standard.
Exam cue: Choose the compliant and professionally scoped answer before the convenient or familiar answer.
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Treating related standards as interchangeable without checking the source.
Guardrail: Avoid answers that rely only on habit, ignore the stated source, skip safety or compliance steps, or choose convenience over the professional standard.
Skipping screening, documentation, authorization, sanitation, recordkeeping, or other required procedure.
Guardrail: Avoid answers that rely only on habit, ignore the stated source, skip safety or compliance steps, or choose convenience over the professional standard.
Choosing an answer that protects convenience instead of client safety, public protection, or the stated professional duty.
Guardrail: Avoid answers that rely only on habit, ignore the stated source, skip safety or compliance steps, or choose convenience over the professional standard.
Memory anchors
Titling
Property titling controls ownership rights, probate exposure, creditor issues, and transfer at death.
Beneficiary Designation
Beneficiary designations can override will provisions for covered accounts or policies.
Will
A will directs probate property and names fiduciaries but does not control every transfer.
Durable POA
A durable power of attorney authorizes financial action during incapacity if valid under law.
Revocable Trust
A revocable trust may support management continuity and probate avoidance but usually remains includible for estate tax.
Irrevocable Trust
An irrevocable trust can shift control and tax results but limits later changes.
Marital Deduction
The marital deduction can defer estate tax for qualifying transfers to a surviving spouse.
GST
Generation-skipping transfer tax targets certain transfers to skip persons.
Estate Liquidity
Estate liquidity supports taxes, debts, expenses, bequests, and equalization.
Postmortem Planning
Postmortem planning may involve disclaimers, elections, asset valuation, and beneficiary coordination.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
A decedent owned a bank account solely in the decedent's name with no beneficiary designation. How does the account generally pass?
Two owners hold property as joint tenants with right of survivorship. What generally happens at the first owner's death?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
What is Pass Harbor?
Completely free exam prep for 317 U.S. exams.
- Practice questions
- Flashcards
- Study guides
- Mock exams
- No registration
- No paywall
- Start instantly
“No more expensive exam prep. Quality study tools should be accessible to everyone.”