A large number of people have changed their investment manager recently – or have decided to become their own manager – as a result of the 2008 market collapse that led to widespread terrible returns. That’s fine – but keep in mind that if you change your manager, you should check with your estate planner to make sure that any new account you create is titled properly and in accordance with your estate plan.

Many estate plans are carefully constructed to title certain assets as solely owned, jointly owned, owned with a transfer-on-death provision, owned by a revocable trust, etc. It’s possible to destroy much of the benefit of a well-built estate plan by moving accounts and not thinking carefully about how to title them.