You must update your Estate Plan, including your Trust and Will, constantly.
The reasons you need to update your Estate Plan – Revocable Living Trust, Will, Health Care Powers, etc. – is that three things are always changing: the law, your relationships, and your assets.
1. The law is regularly changing by changes in the Federal Laws coming from newly enacted law, interpretations by the IRS and Federal Court Cases interpreting laws.
State laws are changing almost every time State Legislators meet. States have their own tax systems and regulate the Court systems in their particular state. They can be modifying laws regularly.
2. Your relationships will change. People that you have relied on grow older and are unable to handle your affairs if you are unable to. People move away and relationships fade. Relationships become strained, even if you don’t know why. Suddenly, someone you considered a close and reliable friend is upset about something and no longer wants to be in close relationship with you.
3. What you own changes. Fifteen years ago there wasn’t a Dell computer stock. Fifteen years from now there may not be a Dell computer stock. We change residences, automobiles, and banks. Even if we don’t want to change the banks, the banks change themselves. In North Carolina, the unthinkable happened when Wachovia Bank disappeared into Wells Fargo Bank. Wachovia had been an institution for what had seemed like forever in North Carolina.
You’ll want to make sure that your Estate Planning Attorney has a Formal Update Program. In The LifePlan System™, our Formal Update Program, we update the legal documents as the law changes, meet with our clients to modify their Estate Plans as their personal situations change, and work with our clients to keep the assets titled in the names of their Living Trusts.
We meet with our clients and their adult children at Thanksgiving and Christmas where we do our “Nuts and Bolts Successor Trustee” workshops where we review how the Estate Plans work. This is a good review for our clients and an excellent view for their adult children. We do these at the holidays because the adult children are often home visiting their parents. We do not discuss assets, or specific Plans, but give a good overview so that the adult children can know and understand what their role might be if mom and dad become sick, lose mental capacity, or pass on.