Estate planners: Watch out for these life changes

Once it’s been created, an estate plan should be considered a living document. While the existing plan should be flexible enough to cover a wide range of financial and familial outcomes, estate plans also need to be revisited when major life changes intrude.

But these changes also provide a chance for an opportunistic wealth manager to be proactive with his or her clients, helping them anticipate problems before they arise. Here are some life milestones that would warrant a second look at an estate plan.

Changes in family status

Marriage, even a remarriage, obviously offers up a whole new range of estate planning options, but so does divorce. Following a divorce, the client will probably want to remove the former spouse as a beneficiary from any trusts, insurance policies and retirement savings plans. The former spouse will likely need to be relieved of any fiduciary duties as well. You may want to remind them to review their will, too.

The death of a spouse or other type of beneficiary can trigger a whole host of estate plan changes. It’s a difficult time to be dealing with something that can seem trivial, but it’s important to remove the deceased’s name from any place in which he or she is listed as a beneficiary as soon as is practical. Otherwise, after the account holder’s death, a successor trustee will need to secure an original death certificate for the predeceased heir. That’s an awful lot of time and hassle for something that could have been easily obviated.

On the other hand, if the client has another child, or even if their beneficiaries have a child, you may want to review the planning to ensure the new dependent is fully accounted for. Or in some cases, the plan holder may want to be assured the new dependents are not covered.

The simple act of growing up may warrant changes in a plan. As minor children turn into adults, they may be ready to be named as fiduciaries, or the client may want to change his or her beneficiary status. Or a beneficiary might play less and less of a role in the client’s life as he or she gets older, leading to a diminution of the beneficiary’s status. It’s worth periodically revisiting the estate plan to make sure the property is still going to the heirs who deserve to have it.

Changes in financial status

For most people who have advanced far enough in life to require a comprehensive estate plan, there won’t likely be too many more significant changes in financial status. One very common one, however, is the sale or disposition of a business or practice, which happens at the end of many a lucrative career. The assets may need to be treated differently both for estate planning purposes and for immediate tax purposes.

If the plan holder purchases or otherwise acquires a business, of course, that might require a rewrite of an existing estate plan. It might make sense at that point to set up a revocable living trust to keep the newly acquired assets out of probate. The estate plan holder may also want to segregate the assets from his or her marital property to avoid losing them in case of divorce.