A well-drafted estate plan is an act of consideration toward the people you love. We outline the questions worth revisiting every few years.
An estate plan is less a set of documents than a set of decisions. The documents merely record them. In our experience, the plans that serve families best are those that are revisited calmly and periodically, rather than assembled once and left in a drawer.
A few questions are worth asking every few years. Do your wills and trusts still reflect your intentions, or have marriages, births, deaths or changed relationships overtaken them? Are the people you have named as executors, trustees and guardians still the right people, and are they still willing? Do beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and insurance policies agree with the rest of the plan, or do they quietly contradict it?
Equally important is the question of communication. Surprises in an estate plan are rarely pleasant ones. Many of the disputes we have seen could have been avoided by a single candid family conversation held while everyone was alive and well.
We coordinate closely with each family's estate attorney to keep plan, portfolio and paperwork aligned. If it has been more than three years since your plan was reviewed, that alone is a good reason to look at it again.