Once you make your first estate plan, you must continue to ensure it is current. An annual or biannual read through your documents is a good way to do this. Sometimes, you will spot things that need updating, while other times you will be able to put it away knowing that no update is needed.
In addition, some major life events merit an immediate adjustment of your estate plan. Here are some of them:
Gaining a child
You might gain a child or a grandchild and want to leave them something when you die. Unless you add them to your plan, that might not happen. Unless you make the changes you could end up with a situation where only some of your children or grandchildren benefit from your estate plan while the later additions to the family miss out. That could lead to problems, which are best avoided by updating your plan to include new additions.
Losing a beneficiary
When one of your beneficiaries dies, you should remove them from your estate plan and redistribute the assets they were due to receive. Doing this will save confusion over what you would have wanted to happen to their share.
When your marital status changes
If you marry, you probably want to add your new spouse to your estate plan. If you divorce, you probably want to remove them from it. Marriage and divorce also tend to affect the assets a person owns, and an estate plan that contains only things they currently own and nothing they no longer own is crucial.
It can take a little work to keep your plan up to date, but doing so can save your executor work and your family stress when you die and your plan comes into action.