Leveraging Trusts And Wills For Professional Athletes (2026 Edition)

Professional athletes face a financial reality most people never encounter. You earn life-changing money in a compressed window, you carry real risk of injury or sudden incapacity, and you operate in the public eye where privacy is constantly at stake. Those three factors together make estate planning one of the most important financial conversations you can have early in your career, not decades down the road.

The right estate planning moves can help protect your family, your privacy, and your wealth across every stage of your career and beyond. The wrong setup, or no setup at all, can leave your loved ones navigating probate court, fighting over decisions, or losing a meaningful portion of your estate to taxes.

In this blog, I am going to break down leveraging trusts and wills for professional athletes, including:

• Wills and what they do (and do not) cover

• Revocable and irrevocable trusts and where each one fits

• The supporting documents that protect you while you are alive

• The 2026 estate tax landscape and what it means for your wealth transfer plan

For a broader view of how all of this fits together, see The Moment Guide To Estate Planning For Professional Athletes.

Why Estate Planning Often Matters More For Athletes

Many people put off estate planning because they think it is something to worry about in their 60s. For an athlete, that math can be backwards.

You are often young, you may have outsized income, you sometimes have dependents earlier in life, and you typically have a public profile that can make your finances a target. You also face something most professionals do not: a real and ongoing risk of catastrophic injury. A torn ACL is one thing. A spinal injury, a traumatic brain injury, a cardiac event during a workout, or a serious car accident on the way to the stadium are all real possibilities that can put you in a hospital bed without the ability to speak for yourself.

The numbers back this up. The NFL alone sees thousands of documented injuries every season. NBA and NHL players deal with concussion protocols on a regular basis. MLB pitchers face career-altering arm injuries every spring. None of these are death scenarios most of the time, but many of them are incapacity scenarios, which is exactly what good estate documents are built for. We cover the broader picture of how athletes can plan around these risks in The Moment Guide To Risk Management For Professional Athletes.

Estate planning is not just about death. It is largely about control. Control over who manages your money if you cannot, who raises your kids if something happens, who has access to your medical decisions, and how your wealth moves to the next generation without potentially losing a meaningful portion to estate tax.

Wills: A Foundation, Not The Full Strategy

A will is often the baseline document in an estate plan. It generally does three things:

• Names who inherits your assets

• Names a guardian for any minor children

• Names an executor to wind up your affairs

Here is what a will typically does not do, and this is where many athletes get tripped up.

A will generally does not avoid probate. Probate is the court-supervised process of validating your will and distributing your assets. It is public, it can be slow (often 6 to 18 months, sometimes longer), and it can be expensive. For a professional athlete, one of the bigger concerns is that probate filings are part of the public record. Assets, beneficiaries, and dollar figures can become searchable.

A will also generally does not control assets that already have beneficiaries listed (retirement accounts, life insurance, certain bank accounts). Those tend to pass independently of whatever your will says.

A will also does nothing while you are still alive. If you take a hit in a game and end up in a coma for six months, the will sits in a drawer. The documents that actually carry you through that scenario are the ones we will get to below.

**Please note: If you die without a will (called dying "intestate"), state law decides who gets your assets. That outcome rarely matches what an athlete might actually want, especially for unmarried players, players with kids from prior relationships, or players supporting parents and siblings.

Trusts: Where Much Of The Strategy Lives

A trust is a legal arrangement where one party (the trustee) holds and manages assets for the benefit of another (the beneficiary). Trusts can be private, immediate, and surgical in ways that wills often cannot match.

For athletes, the right combination of trusts can help address several issues at once: privacy, probate avoidance, asset protection, and estate tax exposure.

Revocable Living Trust

This is often the workhorse trust for many athletes. You create it during your lifetime, you can typically change it whenever you want, and you usually serve as your own trustee while you are alive and capable.

The benefits can include:

• Helping avoid probate for assets titled in the trust's name

• Helping keep your estate private since trust administration often happens outside of court

• Providing continuity if you become incapacitated, since a successor trustee can usually step in without court involvement

  
  

That last point matters a lot for athletes. If you suffer a serious in-game injury and cannot manage your own affairs for weeks or months, a properly drafted revocable trust allows your named successor trustee to step in immediately and keep things running. Mortgage payments, business obligations, investment decisions, and family expenses can all keep moving without a court appointing a conservator.

A revocable trust generally does not save estate tax on its own. Its role is more focused on privacy, control, and helping you avoid the probate process.

Irrevocable Trusts

Once an estate grows past the federal exemption, irrevocable trusts often come into play as a tax-planning tool. They can move assets out of your taxable estate in exchange for giving up the ability to change the trust later. Common structures include:

• Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT): holds large life insurance policies outside your estate

• Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT): uses your exemption while keeping indirect access through your spouse

• Dynasty Trust: helps with multi-generational transfers

• Charitable Remainder or Lead Trusts: combine giving with potential tax efficiency

Each of these has its own use case, and the right mix depends on your contract size, marital status, and long-term goals. We will dig into each of these structures in dedicated future posts.

The Other Documents You May Need

This is where many athletes have a gap in their plan. The trust and the will tend to get the attention, but the supporting documents are often what carries you through a crisis. If you get hurt in a game on Sunday and end up unconscious in a hospital on Monday, the trust does not help much. These documents can.

For an athlete, the risk of needing these documents in your 20s or 30s is not theoretical. Every season brings examples of players carted off the field, players hospitalized after collisions, and players dealing with serious health events nobody saw coming. Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest on Monday Night Football in 2023 is one example that resonated across pro sports. Many athletes benefit from having all five of these in place, with updates whenever life circumstances change.

Durable Power of Attorney

A Durable Power of Attorney (POA) lets someone you name (your "agent" or "attorney in fact") manage your financial and legal affairs if you cannot. The word durable is meaningful. A standard POA generally terminates when you become incapacitated, which is often the exact moment you need one. A durable POA usually stays in effect through incapacity.

For an athlete, the POA can be drafted to cover real-world situations. If you are in a hospital bed after a serious injury, can your agent:

• Sign for your house closing?

• Manage your investment accounts?

• Handle your business interests, endorsements, and LLC filings?

• Negotiate with your team or insurer about disability claims?

The document is often drafted broadly enough to cover these scenarios without being so broad that it creates abuse risk.

Many athletes name a parent or spouse as primary agent. Naming the wrong person here is one of the more common and costly mistakes we see. This person can move money, sign contracts, and make decisions in your name. Choose carefully.

Healthcare Power of Attorney

The Healthcare Power of Attorney (sometimes called a healthcare proxy or medical POA) names who can make medical decisions for you if you cannot speak for yourself. This is often a separate person from your financial agent, though they can be the same person if that fits your family.

For athletes, this document can be especially important. Serious injury scenarios in pro sports often involve fast-moving medical decisions:

• Whether to airlift you to a specialty trauma center

• Whether to operate immediately or wait

• Whether to put you in a medically induced coma

• Whether to attempt a high-risk procedure

Without a healthcare POA, those decisions may get made by default state law rules, which often default to a spouse, then parents, then siblings, in that order. If your family situation is complicated, the wrong person could end up in charge during the most important medical moments of your life.

You may also want a healthcare agent who understands your wishes around things like return-to-play decisions, experimental treatments, and the kinds of injury recovery choices that come up in pro sports. A parent who has never thought about concussion protocols or orthopedic surgery options may not be the right call. Some athletes appoint a former teammate, a trainer they trust, or a family member who has specifically been educated on the kinds of decisions that can come up.

Living Will (Advance Directive)

A Living Will (also called an Advance Directive) spells out your wishes on end-of-life care. It addresses the questions nobody wants to think about: if you are on life support with little chance of recovery, do you want to be kept on machines? If you are in a permanent vegetative state, what level of intervention do you want?

For an athlete, this document can do two important things. First, it can give your healthcare agent clear written guidance so they are not guessing in the worst moment of their life. Second, it can help remove those decisions from family conflict. The Terri Schiavo case is often cited as an example of what can happen when a young, healthy person becomes incapacitated without one of these in place. The family dispute lasted 15 years and went all the way to the Supreme Court.

The reality is that catastrophic head and spinal injuries, while rare, are not unheard of. A document that clarifies your wishes ahead of time is a gift to the people who would otherwise have to guess. You can be as specific as you want. Some athletes include preferences around organ donation, religious considerations, and whether they want certain experimental interventions tried.

HIPAA Authorization

This one sounds bureaucratic, but it can be genuinely important. HIPAA is the federal law that protects the privacy of your medical records. The default rule is that even close family members generally cannot access your medical information without your written consent.

A HIPAA Authorization is a separate document that names the specific people who can talk to your doctors, see your medical records, and receive updates on your condition. Without it, your healthcare agent may have decision-making authority but cannot easily get the information needed to make those decisions intelligently.

For an athlete, this is also a privacy tool. You can authorize the people you want to be informed and deliberately leave others out. If you are dealing with a sensitive injury or condition you do not want leaking to the media, a carefully drafted HIPAA authorization can help control the flow of information. People to consider authorizing often include:

• Your healthcare agent and backup agent

• Your spouse or partner

• Your parents

• Your agent (the sports agent, in this case)

• Your team's medical staff, when appropriate

*Please note: HIPAA authorizations can expire after a set period in some states. Building a reminder to review and refresh yours every few years is often a good idea.

The 2026 Estate Tax Landscape

The numbers can matter. As of January 1, 2026, the federal estate and gift tax exemption sits at $15 million per individual and $30 million per married couple. Amounts above those thresholds may generally be taxed at a flat 40% federal estate tax rate.

The annual gift tax exclusion stayed at $19,000 per recipient for 2026, which means a married couple can give $38,000 per recipient per year to as many people as they want without touching their lifetime exemption.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, made the higher exemption permanent and indexed it for inflation going forward. That removed the prior sunset that was scheduled to reduce the exemption significantly. The planning urgency that existed in 2024 and 2025 has cooled somewhat, but the strategies can still matter because state estate taxes (which apply at lower thresholds in many states) have not changed.

For athletes, the higher exemption is helpful but does not change the underlying reality. A career-ending injury can also be a wealth-creating event if disability insurance pays out, and large insurance payouts can push estates over the exemption faster than people expect. Planning ahead for that scenario tends to be easier than scrambling after the fact.

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What Next?

Do you have a will? A revocable trust? A durable POA, healthcare POA, living will, and HIPAA authorization? Has your plan been updated since you got married, had a child, or signed your last contract?

If any of those answers gave you pause, your plan may be exposed. The good news is that estate planning for athletes is generally fixable, and the upfront cost is often small relative to what it can help protect. Moment Private Wealth works exclusively with professional athletes and coordinates directly with estate attorneys to help build plans that fit your career timeline.

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do I really need a will if I am young and healthy?

For most professional athletes with significant income, dependents, business interests, or a public profile, the answer is generally yes. Athletes also face an elevated risk of serious injury or incapacity, which is exactly what these documents are built for. Dying without a will often means state law decides who gets your assets and who raises your minor children, and the resulting probate is typically public.

2. What happens to my estate plan if I am injured but not killed?

This is where the supporting documents do the heavy lifting. A durable power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney, living will, and HIPAA authorization are what allow your chosen people to step in and manage your finances and medical care while you recover. Without them, your family may need to go to court to get authority, which costs time and money during an already difficult moment.

3. Can a trust protect my assets from lawsuits or creditors?

It depends on the trust. A revocable trust generally will not. Properly structured irrevocable trusts (including domestic asset protection trusts in certain states) may help shield assets from future creditors and lawsuits, though they generally will not protect against existing or known claims. The timing of when the trust is funded can matter significantly.

4. Do I need a trust if my estate is under the $15 million exemption?

Often yes, even if estate tax is not the main driver. Trusts can help with privacy, probate avoidance, incapacity planning, and control over how minor children receive money. For athletes specifically, the incapacity benefits alone are often enough reason to put a revocable trust in place.

5. How often should I update my estate plan?

A general guideline is every three to five years, and ideally after any major life event. That can include marriage, divorce, the birth of a child, a major new contract, the purchase of a home in a new state, a significant injury, or the death of someone named in your documents. Estate documents that are out of date can sometimes be worse than no documents at all.

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*Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.