When Should You Modify an Estate Plan

I’ve got an estate plan, but I’m not sure how I know when to modify it, if I need to modify it.

I’m Sarah Siedentopf. I’m an estate planning attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. And let’s talk about when you need to modify your estate plan.

When I use the word estate plan, I’m thinking about more than just a will, but this does also apply if your estate plan consists entirely of a will. But generally, I’m thinking of will, I’m thinking of power of attorney, advance directive for healthcare, aka, living will, all of the documents, you know, potentially a trust, the things that, together, are considered an estate plan.

The first time that we’re really gonna need to think about modifying is if you get married or if you get divorced. In Georgia, if you get married and you don’t update your will, so that it still says whatever it said beforehand, the court assumes that you forgot and you really would’ve wanted your new spouse to, you know, get at least what they would’ve gotten,  if you died without a will, and they, you know, sort of shoehorn in at least a third for the spouse. And it basically ruins your plan.

So if you got married or know that you’re going to get married when you’re doing your estate plan and you don’t want to include your new spouse, then you either, make sure you do it again, resign the same documents with a new date after your marriage, or say in the documents that you’ve done this in anticipation of marriage and do not want that marriage to revoke your document.

Divorce is similar, in the sense that if you’ve gotten a divorce, the court assumes that you did not, in fact, want this person to be executor or to receive assets. But it gets a little weird that the court just sort of assumes that they’re dead and works things out as they would flow in that situation. So it’s not ideal and should be redone. The flip side of that is if there are any beneficiary designations, those do not change when you get married, when you get divorced. So if you’re in a situation where you’re like, huh, there may be an X on one of my beneficiary designations, go change it because they’re going to inherit whatever it is and the people or persons that you wanted to get it aren’t gonna get it.

Another time that we might be modifying an estate plan is having a child, first child or more children. We want to make sure that those kids are appropriately provided for in the estate plan. And again, we don’t wanna accidentally leave someone out. So you know, the court will, you know, sort of shoehorn, right, a child into the will if needed, but that also may not be the plan. And with more children, if we’ve got any language that says everything to so and so, then we might want to make sure that we add, you know, a split evenly between child A and child B. Another big time to modify an estate plan is if you have moved out of state.

At the very least, you should be talking to an attorney in the new state and making sure that the documents that you have are valid and are gonna work well in the new state. But a lot of times, you know, the real truth is, yes, it’s valid, but no, it’s not going to be smooth to use. Buying a new asset might or might not be a reason to update your estate plan. There’s usually a catchall category that says, you know, everything else that I haven’t mentioned is, you know, handled this particular way. So if the new asset should be handled in that way, great, keep on trucking. If not, you might be looking at changes to specifically say what you want with that asset.

Changes to your trusted people, whether that’s your relationship to them or somebody’s gotten older and is no longer, you know, really up to the task or you know, has passed away, that’s an important time to modify your estate plan because hopefully, there are some backups in there, but you’re definitely gonna wanna check and make sure that, you know, the backups are still appropriate. Another time that we might be modifying an estate plan is a large bump in assets. So if we’ve significantly moved up in income and assets, that’s another time that you wanna look at, are there any things I don’t have  that would be beneficial to me? Are there any reasons that I can say, oh, that happened, but I don’t need to modify? The first one that comes to mind for me is, you know, my agent, my executor, whoever it is, moved. If you moved out of state, you know, talk to a new attorney. You do not need to modify your estate plan, just because somebody moved to a new address.

If they moved to a new address and they change their email and they change their cell phone number, then we might wanna update something because, you know, it’s not gonna be helpful if, you know, the hospital has an advanced directive and they can’t contact this person. That doesn’t work. Another time that we don’t have to change is when we sell something. So if the asset that I have, you know, listed in my will, listed in my trust, doesn’t exist, we skip right over it.

So don’t have to change it when you sell something, unless, of course, that changes the way everything else works.  And then, the last time that I think about not needing to change something is if you have another child, but everything already says split evenly between my children. Is it nice to add the name of the new child? Yes. But is it legally necessary? Will it change what they get? No, you don’t have to change it just because of that. Now, there may be specific items that you want to change. Like if you’re in Georgia and you’ve got minor children and you’ve got a designation of standby guardian, those are required to specifically list the children that they apply to, so they will not apply to new children. And there could be a reason, you know, in that situation that we wanna go ahead and update it I hope that was helpful and if you are in a position where you were thinking about modifying your estate plan, please do give me a call.