Changing an estate plan shouldn’t be difficult.
In fact, it is wise to revisit your estate plan regularly and make changes if you experience major life adjustments.
How to make changes
Most trusts are revocable trusts. That means that you can change them whenever you want, as long as the owners of the trust – which are called trustees – are okay with changing the trust.
There are other kinds of trusts called irrevocable trusts.
These are often set up when one spouse dies, often in a second marriage. Irrevocable trusts restrict what that surviving spouse can do and prevents the surviving spouse from being able to change the terms as easily.
It’s not difficult or expensive to change your estate plan. Depending on the number of changes you need and the amount of years that have passed since you last updated the estate plan, you might be looking at doing a full replacement or you might just be doing a simple one page amendment.
How often should you revisit your estate plan?
It’s not a bad idea to look at the documents every three to five years and make sure that they’re representing what you want them to do upon death.
It’s also a good idea to revisit the documents when you’ve had a major life change.
These major life changes include:
- Divorce
- Children growing into adulthood
- Incapacity
- A desire to change who gets money
- Changing who acts as your agent
These are all events that may warrant or require an amendment to your estate plan.
When in doubt, it’s a good idea to talk to an attorney and they can let you know whether it’s something that would require a change.
