Your life keeps changing, and your estate plan should keep pace. If you have ever asked yourself, “How often should you update your estate plan?” an estate planning lawyer in Fremont, CA, can help, especially after major life events. In this guide, Rodriguez Lagorio, LLP, explains when a review makes sense.
Why Should You Update Your Estate Plan?
Periodic estate plan updates can help ensure your documents still reflect your wishes, assets, chosen decision-makers, and family relationships. They can also keep different parts of your plan aligned with your current intentions. How often you should update your estate plan depends on your circumstances, but a practical approach is to review it every three to five years, even if nothing major has changed.
Life Events and Other Changes That Call for a Review
Major life events and other changes in circumstances may signal that it is time to revisit your documents. Common reasons for a review include:
- Marriage or divorce: Revisit beneficiary, fiduciary, and property provisions.
- Birth or adoption: Consider guardian nominations and beneficiary updates.
- Death or incapacity of someone named in the plan: Reconsider any beneficiary, trustee, executor, or health care agent who can no longer fulfill the intended role.
- Employment or financial changes: Review your plan after a job change that affects your benefits or retirement accounts or after a significant shift in net worth.
- Moving across state lines: Have an attorney review how the new state’s laws may affect your plan.
- Legal or tax changes: Ask an attorney whether new laws affect your existing documents.
Reviewing your plan after these changes can help prevent conflicts among wills, trusts, beneficiary designations, and the people selected to carry out your instructions
What To Review in Your Estate Plan
Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance policies generally control how those assets pass, independently of your will.
A revocable living trust may also need adjustments. Trust amendments can change the trust’s terms, while transferring assets into or out of the trust generally requires separate funding steps. Learning more about living trusts can help you identify which update may be appropriate.
A thorough review should also consider how your estate planning documents work together:
- Last will: Provides instructions for distributing remaining assets.
- Revocable living trust: Holds and manages assets that have been transferred into it.
- Advance health care directive: Records your preferences for medical care.
Reviewing these documents together can reveal outdated appointments or assets that are not coordinated with the rest of the plan.
How Rodriguez Lagorio, LLP, Helps You Stay Current
Keeping your estate plan up to date can help protect your family and provide peace of mind. Our attorneys can review your documents and explain whether updates may help you avoid common estate planning mistakes.
As a boutique family firm, we give every client personalized attention. If you are ready to find out how often you should update your estate plan, call Rodriguez Lagorio, LLP, at (925) 963-2709 to speak with our Fremont, CA, team.
