Estate planning myth: The only way to treat your children or other beneficiaries fairly is to make sure that in the end they each receive an equal share of your estate.
Estate planning reality: Making it truly equal is an impossible task that should be avoided at all costs.
The recommendation: OK, so you bought your oldest daughter her first car and you paid for your youngest daughter's emergency surgery and you put your only son through Harvard. So what? Each of your children is unique and has unique needs, and with those unique needs comes differing costs and expenses. Keeping a running tally of who got what and when they got it will drive you crazy. And have you thought about potential gift tax consequences, cost of living differences, and inflation? How will you take these things into consideration? Don't (well, you do need to be aware of gift tax issues), and don't try to make it equal. In the end someone will probably feel slighted or less loved, but the bottom line is that it really doesn't matter because there will be things that they took for granted or don't remember that can't be quantified in any monetary form.