Adults should have an estate plan in place to provide instructions about who should receive which assets when they die. These plans also provide certain information about your wishes if you become incapacitated.
While it’s true that estate planning is unpleasant, it isn’t a one-and-done task. Instead, you will need to review it sometimes to ensure that it still reflects your wishes. If it doesn’t, you need to update it so that it clearly relays what you want.
What circumstances should trigger an estate plan review?
Many major life circumstances should trigger a review of your estate plan. Some of these include:
- Having or adopting a baby
- Children becoming adults
- Death or incapacitation of someone named in the estate plan
- Divorce
- Major purchases or asset sales
- Moving to a new state
- Changes in tax or estate planning laws
It’s best to review your estate plan if you think you need to, even if you realize that you don’t need to make any changes to it. In some cases, none of these events will take place. That doesn’t mean that you’re done with your estate plan. You should review the plan every five years, even if you don’t have any major life changes.
Creating, reviewing and updating an estate plan can be challenging because you want it to reflect your wishes in a legally enforceable manner. This means that the estate plan must comply with all applicable laws, so it may be beneficial to work with someone familiar with these matters so they can assist you with making this happen.