When and Why to Review Your Florida Estate Plan

You should review your Florida estate plan after any major life or financial change, and otherwise every three to five years to confirm it still matches the law and your wishes. A “review” means re-reading your will, trust, durable power of attorney, health care surrogate designation, and beneficiary forms to verify they still name the right people, follow current Florida law, and avoid probate where you intended. An out-of-date plan is often worse than no plan at all, because it gives everyone false confidence right up until the moment it fails.

I have sat across the table from too many adult children who pulled out a parent’s “estate plan” only to discover it was signed in 1998, named a deceased sibling as executor, and left out the condo bought in 2015. The documents existed. They just didn’t work anymore. This article walks through when to review a Florida estate plan, what specifically to look at, and why the cost of a periodic check-up is trivial next to the cost of a stale one.

Why reviewing your Florida estate plan matters

Estate plans are not appliances you install once and forget. They are snapshots of three moving targets: your family, your assets, and the law. When any of those three drifts, the plan drifts with it, usually in ways nobody notices until a death or incapacity forces the issue.

Consider how much Florida-specific risk lives inside a single document. Florida’s homestead rules under Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution restrict how you can leave your primary residence if you are survived by a spouse or minor child. The elective share statute, Florida Statutes Chapter 732, Part II, guarantees a surviving spouse roughly 30% of the elective estate no matter what your will says. A power of attorney signed before October 1, 2011, may not comply with the modern Florida Power of Attorney Act (Chapter 709, Part II), which banned “springing” powers and tightened banks’ acceptance rules. None of these is exotic. All of them quietly invalidate or distort plans that looked fine on paper.

The point of a review is to catch that drift while you are still alive, competent, and able to fix it cheaply. After incapacity or death, the only remedy is litigation, and litigation in Florida probate is slow, public, and expensive.

Life events that should trigger an immediate review

Some changes can’t wait for a scheduled check-up. If any of the following has happened, treat it as a same-month task, not a someday task.

• Marriage or remarriage. Florida law gives a “pretermitted spouse” — one you married after signing your will — an intestate share unless the will provided for them or waived the issue. Remarriage also collides with homestead and elective-share rules in ways that routinely surprise blended families.
• Divorce. Under Florida Statutes §732.507(2), divorce automatically voids provisions in your will favoring your ex-spouse, treating them as if they predeceased you. But that statute does not fix everything — old beneficiary designations on life insurance and retirement accounts can still pay your ex unless you update them.
• Birth or adoption of a child or grandchild. A child born after your will is signed may be a “pretermitted child” entitled to a share, which can scramble the distribution you actually intended.
• Death of a spouse, beneficiary, executor, or trustee. If your named personal representative or successor trustee has died, your plan may have no one functional at the helm.
• A child or beneficiary develops special needs. An outright inheritance can disqualify someone from Medicaid or SSI. A special needs trust preserves both the gift and the benefits.
• A significant change in assets. Selling a business, buying property, receiving an inheritance, or a major shift in net worth can make an old funding scheme obsolete.
• A move into or out of Florida. A will valid in another state is usually honored here, but Florida’s homestead, elective-share, and personal-representative residency rules are unusual enough that out-of-state documents deserve a fresh Florida read.

Why moving to Florida is its own trigger

Florida is a magnet for retirees, and new residents often assume their existing documents simply carry over. They mostly do — but Florida imposes a residency or close-kinship requirement on who may serve as your personal representative under §733.304. If your will names an out-of-state friend who is not a relative, that person may be legally barred from serving here. Better to learn that during a review than during a probate hearing.

Legal and financial changes that justify a review

Even with no change in your own life, the ground shifts underneath the plan. Two categories matter most.

Changes in the law. Estate tax thresholds, Medicaid eligibility limits, and Florida statutes all move over time. The federal estate tax exemption, for example, is scheduled to change, and plans built around an older exemption can produce results the drafter never intended. Florida updated its power of attorney statute in 2011 and modernized its trust code over the past two decades. Documents predating those reforms frequently need a refresh to be honored smoothly by banks and brokerages.

Changes in your goals. Maybe you once wanted everything split equally, and now one child has become your caregiver while another has prospered independently. Maybe charity has become more important. Maybe you want to protect a home so it can pass without probate. Tools like a retained life estate or a properly structured home transfer can keep a residence in the family while protecting your right to live in it — though the mechanics differ between states, so the strategy must be matched to where the property and the owner actually are.

How often should you review a Florida estate plan?

Absent a triggering event, the working rule I give clients is straightforward:

1. Every three to five years for a routine read-through, even if nothing obvious has changed.
2. Within 30 days of any of the life events listed above.
3. Whenever a major tax or Medicaid law changes — your attorney should flag these, but you should ask.
4. Annually for beneficiary designations, which are the single most commonly overlooked piece of any plan.

That last point deserves emphasis. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and “payable on death” bank accounts pass by beneficiary designation, completely outside your will. A perfect will means nothing if your 401(k) still names an ex-spouse. Reviewing those forms costs nothing and prevents some of the ugliest disputes I see.

What to actually look at during a review

A real review is more than confirming the documents exist. Here is the checklist I run with clients and, increasingly, with the adult children who help their aging parents manage these affairs.

• Fiduciaries: Are your personal representative, successor trustee, agent under power of attorney, and health care surrogate all still alive, willing, and appropriate? Are backups named?
• Beneficiaries: Do the named people still reflect your wishes, and are any deceased or estranged?
• Trust funding: If you have a revocable living trust, is it actually funded? An unfunded trust forces the very probate it was meant to avoid.
• Homestead: Does your plan respect Florida’s constitutional homestead restrictions if you have a spouse or minor child?
• Incapacity documents: Is your durable power of attorney current under the 2011 Act, and do you have a valid health care surrogate and living will?
• Specialized needs: Does anyone in the family need a special needs trust, asset protection, or — for those facing long-term care costs — an income tool such as a pooled income trust to preserve Medicaid eligibility?
• Digital and out-of-state assets: Are online accounts, cryptocurrency, and property in other states accounted for?

For families helping a parent, this checklist doubles as a conversation guide. You are not trying to control your parent’s choices; you are trying to make sure the choices they already made will hold up when they are needed.

The special case of incapacity, not just death

Most people picture estate planning as a death-and-inheritance exercise. In practice, the documents that get used first are the incapacity ones. A durable power of attorney and a designated health care surrogate let a trusted person act when a parent can no longer manage finances or medical decisions. If those are missing or outdated, the family’s only option is a court guardianship under Florida Statutes Chapter 744 — a process so costly and intrusive that avoiding it is, for many families, the whole point of planning. Review these documents first.

What happens if you never review the plan

Neglected plans fail in predictable ways. Assets bought after the will get distributed by intestacy. Trusts created with great intentions sit empty and force probate anyway. Powers of attorney get rejected by banks because they predate the 2011 statute. Ex-spouses inherit through forgotten beneficiary forms. None of these are edge cases; they are the routine wreckage of documents left to age in a drawer.

The fix is almost always cheaper than the failure. A periodic review with a Florida attorney is a modest, predictable expense. A contested probate, a guardianship proceeding, or a will challenge is none of those things. If you want a focused starting point, our overview of Florida estate planning services explains how a review typically works, and you can always reach out through our contact page to schedule one. If you are still building the plan rather than reviewing it, start with the fundamentals on our wills page.

Estate planning is not a single event. It is a relationship between you, your family, and a set of documents that need to keep up with all three. Reviewing on a schedule — and immediately after the big moments — is the difference between a plan that looks reassuring and a plan that actually works.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I review my Florida estate plan?

Review it every three to five years even if nothing has changed, and immediately after any major life event such as marriage, divorce, a birth, a death, a significant change in assets, or a move into or out of Florida. Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance should be checked yearly, since they pass outside your will.

Does a Florida divorce automatically remove my ex-spouse from my will?

Yes, partly. Under Florida Statutes §732.507(2), divorce voids provisions in your will that favor your former spouse, treating them as if they had predeceased you. However, this does not update beneficiary designations on life insurance, 401(k)s, IRAs, or payable-on-death accounts, which can still pay your ex unless you change them directly.

Is my out-of-state will still valid after I move to Florida?

Generally a will validly executed in another state is honored in Florida, but you should still have it reviewed. Florida has distinctive rules on homestead property, the spousal elective share, and who may serve as personal representative (§733.304 limits non-relatives who live out of state), so an out-of-state document can produce unexpected results here.

What documents should I look at when reviewing my estate plan?

Check your will, any revocable or irrevocable trusts (and whether the trust is actually funded), your durable power of attorney, health care surrogate designation and living will, and all beneficiary designations. Confirm that your named fiduciaries are still living and appropriate, and that the plan reflects current Florida law.

Why does reviewing incapacity documents matter as much as the will?

Because they are usually used first. A current durable power of attorney and health care surrogate let a trusted person manage finances and medical care if you become incapacitated. Without valid, up-to-date documents, your family may be forced into a court guardianship under Florida Statutes Chapter 744, which is costly, public, and intrusive.