Unfortunately not all marriages work out. When that happens all sorts of stuff needs to get updated, including your estate plan.

Here’s the quick and dirty of what you need to think about updating, and why.

FIRST, it’s important to know that if you die before your divorce is finalized, your spouse is going to be treated as your spouse.

Translation = if you don’t want your soon to be divorced spouse from getting your assets, you need to update your will and/or trust BEFORE your divorce is finalized.

You will also likely want to update your power of attorney, medical power of attorney, and disposition instructions.

If you had a joint revocable living trust you are going to want to create a new trust for yourself and move your assets into that trust.

Second, you are going to want to make sure all of your beneficiary designations are update to reflect your new situation.

If your spouse or family trust is the beneficiary you are going to want to update that or the beneficiary designations will control and your assets will go where you have directed.

That’s the long and the short of it.

Don’t put this off. The consequences could be huge.

Cheers,

Christopher Small
Estate Planning Attorney

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