The Post-it Note Inheritance Trend—and the Family Fights It Can Leave Behind

Years before Marilyn Boysen died, she devised a simple way of figuring out which of her belongings her daughters wanted to keep: She asked them to put sticky notes on them.

Versions of the ritual have been depicted in TV shows like "Gilmore Girls" and "Succession." But Nakia Gray, a Maryland estate planning attorney with 20 years of experience, warns that it works better in fiction than in court.

“The Post-it note is usually the heir's wish list, written in the heir's handwriting, and stuck to someone else's dresser,” she tells Realtor.com®. “Legally, it's worth about as much as the sticky pad it came from.”

Boysen’s family would eventually learn that lesson the hard way.

After her death, a years-old handwritten document emerged that appeared to leave her possessions to a different set of heirs than those detailed in the sticky notes placed by her daughters. The disagreement ended up in court—and more families are finding themselves in the same situation.

The number of probate and estate cases entering U.S. state courts rose about 32% between 2020 and 2024, according to National Center for State Courts data. And probate attorneys expect contested estates to become a bigger part of the legal landscape as trillions of dollars pass from older Americans to their heirs.

The fight can reach far beyond the Post-it

Many families are entering that wealth transfer without clear, current instructions.

Among more than 4,300 Americans who lost a close family member in the past five years, 40% told Trust & Will that the person died without a complete estate plan, 28% said there was no plan at all, while 12% said one existed but was incomplete or out of date.

That planning gap can give informal signals—a sticky note, a remembered promise, a family understanding—far more importance after a death than anyone intended.

In the handwritten document later presented to the court, Boysen directed that “all real property and personal property” be divided among her grandchildren.

“They can sell everything or whatever they wish,” she added.

So, depending on which instructions ultimately prevailed, Boysen’s real estate was implicated, too—and the stakes of a seemingly harmless trend shift from sentimental value to generational wealth.

Among Americans who expect an inheritance, 35% told Trust & Will they expect to receive a house or other real estate, while 25% expect jewelry or family heirlooms. But its the assets with the greatest financial consequences that families often overlook, according to Gray.

“One thing families almost always miss: If Mom or Dad owns a business, the Post-it problem gets much bigger,” she says. “People will label the dining room table and never think about who gets the LLC, the client list, the brand name, or the rights to the cookbook Dad self-published.”

Those assets can have their own rules governing what happens after an owner dies, Gray adds, potentially leaving families to sort through ownership agreements and intellectual property rights alongside the estate.

“I've seen families spend months arguing over a recliner while the business that paid for the house sat in limbo,” she says.

Even the owner’s Post-it may not be enough

When sheriff’s deputies found Jamie Leandra Bixby dead in her home in 2023, they also found two handwritten sticky notes on a coffee table.

The first ended with three words that seemed difficult to misinterpret: “Beth gets everything.”

Bixby’s friend Beth Levendis argued that the notes constituted a holographic will—a handwritten will that can be valid without witnesses if it meets the requirements of state law—naming her as the sole beneficiary. Meanwhile, Bixby’s five sisters argued that she had died without a valid will.

The dispute eventually came down to the final two letters.

At the bottom of one note, Bixby had written “XO.” Levendis argued that the sign-off functioned as Bixby’s signature and produced other letters, emails, and text messages showing that Bixby regularly used combinations of X's and O's.

The Arizona Court of Appeals found that no reasonable person could conclude Bixby intended the “XO” to authenticate the notes as her signature. Her regular use of the symbols instead supported their ordinary meaning: “hugs and kisses.”

Because Arizona required a holographic will to be signed, “Beth gets everything” was not enough.

The case highlights a second trap for families relying on informal instructions: Making your wishes obvious is not always the same thing as making them legally effective.

And exactly what an informal note can accomplish varies by state.

Jeffrey R. Loew, a California trusts and estates attorney, says that in his state, for example, a court may consider a note as evidence if an heir can establish that the deceased person wrote it and intended it to identify who should receive the property.

But that still leaves plenty to fight over: when the note was written, what it was meant to accomplish, and whether the owner later changed their mind.

“Another heir may argue, for example, that the decedent changed his or her mind later, or that the Post-it served some other purpose or that the heir who wanted the item added the Post-it to that item,” Loew says.

The better version of the Post-it system

The answer isn’t to stop talking about who wants the china cabinet, but to ensure those conversations eventually make their way into the formal estate plan.

Gray recommends putting particularly important gifts directly into a will or trust and, where state law permits, using a separate personal-property list to spell out who should receive individual belongings.

“That's the grown-up version of the Post-it note,” she says.

Loew similarly recommends a signed document identifying who should receive specific personal property.

“A complete estate plan often includes a letter signed by the decedent that states who should receive particular items of personal property,” he says. “This is the best way to ensure that that person's wishes are carried out faithfully.”

But getting the wishes onto paper is only half the job.

Families also need to revisit those instructions as assets and relationships change. Trust & Will found that 10% of Americans avoid inheritance conversations because they assume everything has already been handled—a risky assumption when marriages end, beneficiaries die, property is sold, or family relationships shift.

And those conversations are worth having before there is an estate to divide: 17% of respondents told Trust & Will that money, an inheritance, or an estate had permanently damaged a family relationship. Another 17% said it caused tension their family eventually recovered from.