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What are the necessary documents in an estate plan? Estate plans vary, and depending on the size of your estate, you could have either a very simple estate plan or a very complex one.

But if we go back to basics, most estate plans have a few general things in common, whether they are for small estates or multimillion-dollar ones.

Here is a list of the five must-have documents for a basic estate plan:

So, you're thinking about doing your estate plan, but where should you begin?

An estate plan can be simple to draw up, if your estate is simple and includes few assets. But if you have a more complex estate, things can get tricky.

For the purpose of this discussion, we'll talk about more simple estates. Here are three ways to start your estate planning:

Former New York Times writer Ada Louise Huxtable passed away on Monday in New York. She is best known for her architectural criticism and received a Pulitzer Prize for her critiques. Most recently, she wrote for The Wall Street Journal.

Huxtable, 91, died of cancer, according to her attorney. She began writing for The Times in 1963, as the newspaper's first architecture critic. She claimed that architecture should primarily be judged by how it makes the people who use it feel.

She was also one of the early advocates of historic preservation in a city filled with historic buildings. One of her most memorable criticisms came from her thoughts on the new Penn Station building and the demolition of the old one.

Last week, the music industry lost one of the first avant-garde composers of his time, Ravi Shankar, at the age of 92.

Shankar's music label, East Meets West Music, and the Ravi Shankar Foundation issued a press release stating that the singer passed away at a hospital in La Jolla, California.

The iconic singer and played an instrumental role in bringing Indian music to the western world, as he introduced European and American audiences to the simple sound of the sitar in the 1950s. His music inspired George Harrison of the Beatles, as well as countless other musicians.

So what will happen to his estate?

The family members of mall magnate Melvin Simon were still in court over his estate, three years after his death, reports The Indianapolis Star. But the court dates are now over as his $2 billion estate is finally settled. The details of the settlement remain hushed.

A settlement in the $2 billion estate was approved on Wednesday. The largest part of his estate included shares in his shopping mall empire. He died in 2009 at the age of 82, and family members began fighting over the estate almost immediately.

The parties involved in the will contest were the daughter of Melvin Simon and his widow. The daughters allege that their father suffered from dementia at the time his will was amended.

Here's a way to get into a billionaire's will. Shower her with Smurfs.

No, really. That's the idea that the Beth Israel Medical Center had when it came to their wealthiest patient, Huguette Clark. According to The New York Post, the hospital showered Clark with stuffed cartoon characters and attempted to appeal to the child-like billionaire heiress' cartoon fetish in order to get her millions.

In fact, one hospital official even suggested sending Clark a gift of Smurf balloons, saying that Smurfs were her new favorite cartoon, writes The NY Post .

And evidently, it worked.

This case puts a whole new meaning to the phrase "love thy neighbor."

Or rather, "love thy neighbour" (that's neighbor with a "u" if we're spelling it the Australian way). A woman in Australia gave her entire $12.5 million estate to her neighbor! Of course, surviving family members didn't love that.

Betty Harris died at age 95, back in 2009. Her estate was originally left to Coralie Hart, her niece, reports Fox News.

Huguette Clark's estate is back in the news this week. This time, Californians are stepping into the estate battle.

Huguette Clark had a property out in Santa Barbara, California. The property is named Bellosguardo. According to NBC News, community leaders in that area have started a PR campaign for the preservation of Clark's ocean-front home.

They claim Clark's will called for the home to be preserved as an art institution.

Inheritance planning is complex and sometimes, if there is no will, results in some tricky questions. For example, what are the rights of an adopted child, once the adoption decree is said and done?

This is really a question that comes up in two instances: Intestacy, and in the case that the child is omitted under the will. The answers to these two questions lie in New York's omitted spouse rules and in New York's intestacy laws.

First off, what are the adopted child's rights to inherit from their birth parent?

Elliot Carter died Monday at the age of 103. Carter, a famous composer, passed away in his Greenwich Village apartment, reports The New York Times.

While his assistant confirmed the death, he didn't disclose the cause of death.

While The Seattle Times describes Carter's music as "difficult to play, difficult to listen to, and... difficult to write," he was one of the most celebrated modern composers of our era.