Reviewing your Florida estate plan means re-reading your will, trust, powers of attorney, and beneficiary designations to confirm they still match your family, your assets, and current Florida law. You should review your plan at least every three to five years, and immediately after any major life event — a death, divorce, birth, business sale, or move into the state. An estate plan is not a document you sign once and file away; it is a set of instructions that has to keep pace with a life that keeps changing.
I have practiced estate and probate law long enough to watch the same painful scenario repeat itself in Palm Beach County probate court: a perfectly valid will that perfectly distributes an estate the way the family looked fifteen years ago. The signatures are notarized, the witnesses are real, the document is enforceable — and it still produces a result the deceased would have hated. The fix is almost always cheaper than the problem. This guide explains when to review your Florida estate plan, why those moments matter, and what specifically tends to break.
Why an estate plan goes stale (even a well-drafted one)
Three forces quietly erode an estate plan over time: your life changes, your assets change, and the law changes. None of them announce themselves. You do not get a letter from the state telling you the homestead exemption rules shifted or that your named personal representative moved to Oregon and no longer qualifies under Florida law.
Consider Florida’s rule on who may serve as a personal representative. Under Florida Statutes §733.304, a nonresident generally cannot serve unless they are closely related to the decedent — a spouse, child, parent, sibling, or certain other relatives. Name a trusted friend in Boca Raton as your personal representative, then watch them retire to Tennessee, and your carefully chosen executor may be legally disqualified the moment they are needed. The will did not change. The world around it did.
This is the core reason review matters. A static document sits inside a moving target.
Life events that should trigger an immediate review
Some moments are clear signals to call your attorney before the year is out. These are the events that most often invalidate intentions or create unintended outcomes:
- Marriage or remarriage. Florida grants a surviving spouse strong statutory rights — an elective share of roughly 30% of the elective estate under Florida Statutes §732.201, plus homestead and family allowance protections. A new spouse can override an old will in ways you never intended.
- Divorce. Florida law (§732.507 for wills and §736.1105 for revocable trusts) automatically voids provisions favoring a former spouse, but it does not clean up beneficiary designations on every account or fix who now inherits. Gaps appear.
- Birth or adoption of a child or grandchild. An afterborn or pretermitted child can claim a share under §732.302, scrambling your distribution.
- Death of a beneficiary, personal representative, trustee, or guardian. If your backup never got named, the court chooses for you.
- A significant change in wealth — a business sale, inheritance, lawsuit settlement, or real estate purchase.
- A move into or out of Florida. Estate planning is governed by the law of your domicile, and Florida’s homestead and creditor-protection rules are unusually generous. Documents drafted in another state may not execute cleanly here.
- A serious health diagnosis for you or a beneficiary — especially one that raises long-term-care and Medicaid-eligibility questions.
If you have lived through any of these since you last signed your documents, treat it as a flashing light, not a footnote.
The 3-to-5-year review cadence (even when nothing dramatic happens)
Absent a triggering event, a calendar review every three to five years is the right discipline. Why a fixed cadence when life seems quiet? Because the slow changes are the dangerous ones. Tax thresholds drift. The financial institution holding your IRA gets acquired and your beneficiary form vanishes in the transfer. A child grows up and is now perfectly capable of managing their own inheritance, so the protective trust you built when they were eight is no longer necessary. None of these makes headlines in your own life, yet each can reshape the outcome.
I tell Palm Beach clients to pair the review with something they already do on a schedule — an annual tax meeting, a portfolio rebalance, a birthday with a round number. The point is to make the review automatic so it does not depend on remembering.
What we actually look at during a review
- Fiduciary roles. Are your personal representative, trustee, health care surrogate, and agent under your power of attorney still alive, willing, qualified, and the right choice today?
- Beneficiary designations. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and annuities pass by contract, not by will. These override your will entirely — and they are the single most common point of failure.
- Trust funding. A revocable living trust only controls assets actually titled in its name. An unfunded trust is an empty box.
- Powers of attorney. Florida’s durable power of attorney statute (Chapter 709) was modernized in 2011; pre-2011 forms may not include the specific authority banks now demand.
- Homestead and titling. How your primary residence is titled affects both creditor protection and how it passes at death.
Florida-specific traps that make review non-optional
Florida is not a generic estate-planning state, and that is exactly why imported or aging documents cause trouble here.
Homestead. The Florida Constitution restricts how you may devise a homestead property if you are survived by a spouse or minor child. You cannot simply will the house to whomever you like; an attempted devise that violates the homestead rules can be struck down, sending the property somewhere you never intended.
The elective share. As noted, a surviving spouse can claim a statutory percentage of the elective estate regardless of what your will says. Remarry without updating your plan and you may unintentionally disinherit children from a first marriage — or trigger litigation between them and the new spouse.
Long-term care and Medicaid planning. Florida’s Medicaid program has strict asset and income limits, and protecting a family home or savings from nursing-home spend-down requires advance planning, often years ahead. Tools like a properly structured irrevocable trust matter here. For clients with cross-border family or assets in New York, the mechanics are worth understanding side by side — our colleagues explain the New York version in their overview of the , and a related income-management tool in their discussion of the . The concepts translate, but the statutes and limits differ by state, so Florida residents should plan under Florida rules.
Estate-plan review for business owners and succession
If you own a business, your estate plan and your business succession plan are the same conversation, whether or not anyone has told you so. A will that quietly leaves a closely held company “to my three children equally” can hand operational control of a working enterprise to heirs who do not get along, do not work in the business, or do not want it. Equal is not the same as workable.
For owners, a review should re-examine several moving parts at once:
- The buy-sell or operating agreement. Does it dovetail with your will and trust, or contradict them? Conflicting documents are litigation waiting to happen.
- Funding for the transition. Is there life insurance or liquidity to buy out a deceased owner’s family without forcing a fire sale?
- Successor management. Who runs the company on day one if you are suddenly gone? That answer should live in a document, not in your head.
- Valuation and tax exposure. A business that has grown since your last plan may now create a transfer-tax problem that did not exist before.
A sale, a new partner, a change in entity structure, or a child stepping into (or out of) the business should all trigger a fresh look. The Florida office handles these succession questions as part of its , and we routinely coordinate the business documents and the personal estate documents so they speak with one voice.
What happens if you skip the review
The cost of a stale plan is rarely the document itself — it is the probate, the family conflict, and the lost protections. An out-of-date beneficiary form can send a 401(k) to an ex-spouse. A disqualified personal representative can stall an estate for months. An unfunded trust can drop the very assets you meant to keep private into open probate. You can read more about how the court process unfolds on our Florida probate overview, and about the foundational documents on our wills page.
None of these failures shows up while you are alive to fix them. That is the quiet danger of an estate plan: it is only tested at the exact moment you can no longer revise it.
How to get started
A review does not always mean a rewrite. Often it is a short codicil, an amendment to a trust, or simply re-executing a power of attorney on a current Florida form. Sometimes the entire plan is fine and you leave the meeting reassured — which is itself worth the appointment. Bring your current documents, a recent statement for each major account, and a short list of anything that has changed since you signed. If you are not sure whether a change matters, that uncertainty is precisely the reason to ask. Our Palm Beach team is glad to take a look; you can reach us through our contact page.
Estate planning rewards the people who treat it as maintenance rather than a one-time event. Review on a cadence, review after every milestone, and your documents will still mean what you meant when they finally have to speak for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should I review my Florida estate plan?
At minimum every three to five years, and immediately after any major life event such as a marriage, divorce, birth, death of a beneficiary or fiduciary, business sale, significant change in wealth, or a move into or out of Florida. The fixed cadence catches the slow changes (tax thresholds, lost beneficiary forms, outdated power-of-attorney forms) that never announce themselves.
Does getting divorced in Florida automatically update my estate plan?
Partly. Florida Statutes §732.507 and §736.1105 automatically void provisions favoring a former spouse in your will and revocable trust. However, the law does not fix beneficiary designations on every retirement account or life insurance policy, and it does not decide who now inherits in the ex-spouse’s place. A post-divorce review is essential to close those gaps.
Can my out-of-state will or trust still work after I move to Florida?
A valid out-of-state will is generally honored, but Florida’s rules on homestead, the spousal elective share, and who may serve as personal representative are distinctive. Documents drafted elsewhere may not execute cleanly or may produce unintended results here. New Florida residents should have their plan reviewed under Florida law.
I own a business. Why should that change how I review my estate plan?
Because your estate plan and your succession plan are the same conversation. A review should confirm that your buy-sell or operating agreement matches your will and trust, that there is liquidity to handle a buyout, that a successor manager is named, and that business growth has not created new transfer-tax exposure. Conflicting documents are a common source of family litigation.
Does reviewing my estate plan mean I have to rewrite everything?
No. Often a review results in a small amendment, a codicil, an updated beneficiary form, or re-executing a power of attorney on a current Florida form. Sometimes the plan is already sound and the meeting simply confirms it. The review is maintenance, not an automatic overhaul.
Have a question about your estate?
Talk it through with Russel Morgan — free 30-minute consult.
For more on our Florida practice, see our overview of powers of attorney in Florida. Morgan Legal Group's affiliated New York office also handles .
