Problems If You Don’t Amend Your Estate Plan After A Divorce

You hear this advice often: After a divorce, it’s time to revisit or amend your estate plan. But why? What are the possible issues or problems with an estate plan, after a divorce? What exactly are you looking to change?

Property You No Longer Have

Many of the changes to an estate plan are obvious, because you no longer own the property that you owned before the divorce.

For example, perhaps the marital home is ordered to be sold in the divorce—now you’ve got a chunk of money from the sale of that home, not the home itself. Or, your retirement account may not be all yours to do what you want with, if your spouse got some of it in the divorce.

The money from a bank account you left to someone in your will, may no longer be the amount you thought it was—or there at all, depending on who was awarded it in the divorce.

But your estate plan reflects none of these changes, unless you revisit it post divorce.

Automatic Transfers on Accounts

Look for payable on death (POD) or transfer on death (TOD) accounts and assets. You may have signed a POD agreement with your bank when you first opened the accounts, without even knowing what you were doing. That POD agreement says that your (now, ex) spouse gets everything in your account when you pass, and that will happen automatically, and outside of probate, and even if you are the sole owner of the account itself.

Minor Children

If you have minor children, you may want to leave property to those children. But that may be a problem because if your children are minors, there may have to be a guardian appointed, and that guardian would likely be, you guessed it, your ex spouse.

It’s better to leave property to a trust, and to a trustee, with the minor as the beneficiary of the trust, so as to keep the probate court from appointing an ex spouse as guardian over the property you’ve left for your minor children. And, because it’s a trust, it passes outside of probate court, and thus, can save you or your heirs valuable time and money.

If you pass and your ex spouse is still alive, it is likely that he or she would be the guardian of the children. But if you have reason to believe that isn’t in the best interest of the child—say, the other spouse has a criminal history, or history of abuse—you can say that, and designate someone else, in your estate documents.

Get it Changed Now

If you have a longer, contentious divorce that looks like it could take a lot of time, you need to act fast. If you should pass while your divorce case is still pending, and has not been finalized, the law treats you as still married, thus giving your spouse all the rights he or she would have as if you were both happily married.

Life changes require changes to your estate plan. Call the Torrance probate will and estate attorneys at Samuel Ford Law today for an estate plan that works for your life and loved ones.

Sources:

https://trustandwill.com/learn/estate-planning-and-divorce?srsltid=AfmBOoq8IVvZjiTxL0JCLvm9EzPD0xP-BpSdEGoFqUciIiCrQAuIIUQ_

actec.org/resource-center/video/divorce-and-estate-planning/