Worcester Estate Planning Attorney Polly Tatum Says an Estate Plan is a Spring Cleaning List Must

The arrival of spring is the perfect time to take on any number of tasks that may have been hovering undone on your To Do list. However, there’s one item that you may not have considered adding to your spring cleaning list: your estate plan.

Reviewing your estate plan regularly is a critical part of ensuring that it continues to reflect your current preferences and needs–and that it does not contain outdated information. By adding it to your spring cleaning checklist, you can ensure that you get an annual review of your estate plan. Worcester estate planning attorney Polly Tatum points out a number of critical reasons why you must update your estate plan on a regular basis–and what you need to look for.

Why Do You Need to “Spring Clean” Your Estate Plan?

Your estate plan is not a static, unchanging document. Things change with your finances, your family, and your personal preferences. For example:

Your Family Construction May Change

Have you had children in the past year? Grandchildren? Did someone get married or divorced? All those elements may fundamentally change the way you want to handle your estate plan and your future wishes. For example, if you have specifically named your grandchildren in your will, and you added a new grandchild in the last year, you may want to make sure that they’re recognized. Marriage, divorce, or other circumstances can also change the way you want to handle distribution of your assets following your death.

Your Wishes May Change Over Time

Over time, you may change the way you want to handle your last wishes. As your health declines, you might want to change the measures you want taken in order to keep you alive in an emergency, for example; or you might change the way you want to approach the distribution of your assets, especially if your relationship with family members has changed. Minor changes in your current circumstances can lead to considerable changes in the way you want to handle those wishes.

Children Grow and Change

As your children grow, their needs may change. Young children will need a guardian named in your will. Adult children, on the other hand, might not need that type of support. You might set up a trust for younger children so that  money could be used for their care in the event of your death, but handle the way you want to handle those arrangements once all your children are adults.

Reviewing Your Estate Plan with a Worcester Estate Planning Attorney

As you review your estate plan, make sure you take these key elements into consideration. Working with a Worcester estate planning attorney can help you go over all the critical elements.

1. Do your healthcare directives still reflect your wishes?

If you have chosen someone in particular to represent you if you cannot make your own medical decisions, does that person still have the ability to fill that role and ensure that your wishes are met? If you have listed specific types of care you would want attempted or that you want to avoid, have your desires changed? For example, as you age, you might want less extreme measures taken to keep you alive, or you might find that you want more focus on comfort than on prolonging life. Writing that out in your healthcare directive can ensure that your desires are followed.

2. Does your will still reflect the way you want to distribute your assets?

You can change the way you want to distribute your assets at any time, and for any number of reasons. Your family situation may change. Your needs may change. You may simply want to leave specific items to specific people based on their changing preferences or needs. Not only that, your assets themselves may change: you may come into a sudden windfall, see your income increase substantially, or discover that you have fewer assets available to leave to your heirs than you initially thought. By reviewing your will, you can make sure that it still reflects your current desires.

 3. Do you have an effective guardianship arrangement in place for any minor children?

Choosing a guardian for your minor children can be a delicate and difficult process. You want to make sure you have chosen a guardian who will love and support your children while raising them the way you would want to have them raised. Your opinion of the right guardian for your children might change based on your children’s ages or ongoing needs, or the behavior of that guardian. For example, when your children are young, you might assign your parents guardianship if something happens to you. As your parents’ health declines, however, you may want to make other arrangements.

Spring is here, and with it, a great opportunity to take a fresh look at your estate plan and how it meets your current needs. A Worcester estate planning attorney can help lookover the details of your estate plan and ensure that it meets your needs.