A well drafted estate plan is indispensible in regards to protecting one’s family, property, assets, and benefits. Yet, as life events develop, estate plans must be updated or they become irrelevant.
Some suggest having your estate plan reviewed annually. Changes in the economy or tax code might affect the plan. Others suggest having your plan reviewed every five years. Still, perhaps the best suggestion is to have your plan reviewed and updated immediately after any major life changing event. But what is a life changing event?
Well, let’s say for example, you and your spouse have a child. That is a fairly major life changing event. As such, you might want to add the child to your Will and maybe set up a Trust for her or him. If you purchase a home, certainly you want to add the home into your Trust. If in the process you sold your existing home, you will want to remove the sold home from the Trust. Suppose you start a business, close a business, divorce, remarry, your child makes you a grandparent, etc. All of these are major life changing events. All of these examples will assuredly affect your estate planning.
The purpose of an estate plan is to avoid probate and to keep the state from deciding how to divvy your possessions, at your expense and that of your heirs. However, an out of date estate plan is near worthless and easily contestable, leaving your estate wide open to the possibility of a messy probate.
Here is another way of looking at it. An estate plan is a tool intended for the use of protecting yourself and your family from probate. Like any tool however, it must be stored somewhere safe, maintained, cleaned and repaired when necessary; treated as such, an estate plan will prove invaluable in the securing and protecting of your estate.
