How Often Should You Change Your Estate Plan?
By Barry Zimmer on August 18th, 2016 in Estate Planning
If you think it is time to change your estate plan, you should consult with a Cincinnati estate planning attorney. It is a good idea to make modifications to your plan periodically and a legal professional can help you with the process of making changes.
Zimmer Law Firm has extensive experience advising clients on their options to update their estate plan and on taking care of the technical legal steps which are necessary to make a change. If you are ready to make modifications in order to ensure your estate plan is current and is a reflection of your wishes, give us a call today.
How Often Should You Change Your Estate Plan?
It is important to keep your estate plan up-to-date as the conditions of your life alter. Many people go through life changes, and you want your plan to reflect your new situation. Fidelity Investments lists a wide variety of different milestones which can necessitate making a change to your estate plan. Examples include:
- Marriage or divorce
- Having or adopting children or grandchildren
- Children becoming independent adults
- Children or grandchildren requiring educational funding
- The death of the person who was named as guardian for your children or a change in the circumstances of the person who was named as guardian for your children
- New dependents, such as when you become responsible for an incapacitated adult
- Illness of you, your spouse, or other family members
- Disability of you, your spouse or other family members
- Acquiring large assets, such as purchasing a home
- Substantial changes in the value of your assets
- Receiving a large gift or inheritance
- Changes in Ohio or federal laws on estates
- The death or disability of any family member
- Starting a company or selling a company
- Changes in life insurance coverage or changes in long-term care insurance coverage
- Taking on any type of large debts or other liabilities for any reason
- Changes in the circumstances of the person who you named as trustee or who you named as executor
- Changes in your career or income level
In addition to when you experience these or other major life milestones, you should also consider periodically reviewing your estate plan around once a year when you do your other financial planning. Considering your current situation, your plans for the future, and your goals for your family can help you to determine if your estate plan needs to be modified or not.
What You Need to Know About Changing Your Estate Plan
When you update an estate plan, you need to make certain that you have taken the proper steps to ensure that the updates are done correctly. For example, you want to make clear which version of your will is the latest version of your will that reflects your wishes. An experienced Cincinnati estate planning attorney will assist you in making clear exactly what your current wishes are.
If you are taking additional estate planning steps which you had not taken in the past, such as creating a trust for the first time, you also need to make certain that you are choosing the right estate planning tools. For example, an attorney can help you to decide what type of trust is best to fund a child or grandchild’s education or to provide for someone that you love who has a disabling condition.
You should consider what updates you wish to make to your estate plan in order for your plan to be appropriate for your current family and life situation. An experienced attorney will help you to make proper use of legal tools to achieve your goals.
Getting Help from a Cincinnati Estate Planning Attorney
Keeping up with changes to your estate plan is essential as your life changes. You never want to leave a plan in place which no longer reflects your current preferences. Life could change quickly and you could become incapacitated or killed, which would mean the plan you don’t want would go into effect. Take action before it is too late.
A Cincinnati estate planning attorney at Zimmer Law Firm is ready to provide you with the assistance you need to modify your existing plan to reflect your current goals for the future. To learn more about the ways in which we assist with estate plan modifications, give us a call at 513.721.1513. You can also join us for a free seminar to find out more about what your estate plan should contain and why it may need to be periodically modified.