Hi, I’m estate planning and probate attorney Sarah Siedentopf. What happens to your will in Georgia if you get divorced? You were married… you and your spouse did a will… you get divorced. What happens? Is that will still in place? Do you still have someone as guardian of your child?
The answer is that Georgia law says that anything given to a spouse before the divorce in a will gets revoked. The way Georgia deals with this is by pretending that that spouse predeceased you. Erase that person and things go to whoever else they would have gone to. So the designation of a guardian for your minor child would still be intact but you will not be giving any assets to an ex-spouse after a divorce.
However, if you do a new will after the divorce stating that you want to give something to this ex-spouse, that will be valid and upheld. The court just wants to make sure that you didn’t forget about it because generally we assume that you don’t want things going to an ex-spouse. Now, this is not true to beneficiary designations.
Those hold no matter what and so if you get divorced and you don’t change your beneficiary designations on policies and insurance and that sort of thing, those will actually pay out to your ex and that’s probably not what you’re looking for. So you will want to change those, but that is what happens to your will if you get divorced. Thanks.
