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Keeping a Montgomery County Estate Plan Updated

It is important to make sure your estate plan matches both your current circumstances and the current law. Keeping a Montgomery County estate plan updated can help you make sure that your wishes for your assets will be followed. A detail-oriented estate planning lawyer can help you make sure that your plan is as up-to-date as possible.

When Should Someone Have Their Estate Plan Reviewed?

A person should always pay attention to changes in the law with respect to estate taxes. Any additional, major changes in family circumstances would also be a cue to a person to revisit their plan to make sure that it still reflects their wishes with respect to the disposition of their assets. In addition, major life events or major life changes such as marriages, divorces, deaths in the family, and births in the family are all major changes in a person’s circumstances that might warrant a revision or change in a plan.

Most Commonly Updated Sections

It is a good idea to always keep in mind beneficiary designations to make sure they fit in with their current estate plan. Their named beneficiary designations should be up-to-date and in line with their estate plan and should be maintained and periodically reviewed. Any assets of a person’s estate plan that have named beneficiaries should also be reviewed and updated by the Testator, the person who has created the Will, to ensure that the people who are currently named in their Will still want to receive assets from the estate.

How Complicated Updating a Document Is

The difficulty of updating an Estate Plan depends on the changes that need to be made. If it is simply a matter of changing the beneficiaries of a Will or nominating a new person as a Personal Representative, those changes are not very complicated. If a different Estate Plan needs to be created due to significant changes in the law then that would be a more substantial change of the document.

How Changes in Jurisdiction Impact a Montgomery County Plan

An Estate Plan that has been created in one jurisdiction may not warrant a change if a person moves to a different jurisdiction, but it is prudent to review the estate planning documents with an attorney in the new jurisdiction to ensure that their estate planning documents still make sense given the change. One good example is if a person currently lives in Virginia and created Virginia estate planning documents and then moves to Maryland, that person should have their documents evaluated and reviewed by a Maryland estate planning attorney because there is a very big difference in the estate tax systems of Virginia and Maryland. In Virginia, there is no estate tax, while in Maryland there is an estate tax.

Reach Out to an Attorney About Keeping a Montgomery County Estate Plan Updated

It is the role of an attorney to keep up-to-date with any changes in the law and to potentially alert clients to changes in the law so that the estate plan documents can be revisited to make sure they still comply with the law. For personal and family circumstances, the person should keep their estate plan updated with any changes. For more information about keeping a Montgomery County estate plan updated, call today for a consultation.