There are a lot of details to consider as you create your New York estate plan. One of them will be to consider if you are divorced and plan to get married again. You very likely have no intention of including your former spouse in your estate plan, so a revision may be necessary.
Take the time to revise your plan
Estate planning is an activity that deserves your full focus. This is the means by which you can provide for your family members after you pass on. As a result, you need to make sure that you name a primary beneficiary. This will let you keep control of the distribution of assets that is bound to take place.
If you don’t name a beneficiary in your estate plan, you leave the door open for others to decide. For example, your insurance company can step in to make its own distribution of your assets. This will likely be an experience with which none of your heirs are pleased. It’s much better to handle this on your own.
You may be planning your estate at a time when you are relatively young and still have many years left to live. If this is the case, some of the people you name in your plan may pass before you do. You will need to revise your plan if this happens. You may also welcome some new children or grandchildren.
Don’t let your current spouse be forgotten
If you have recently remarried, you will need to make further adjustments to your estate plan. These will reflect the fact that you have most likely named your current spouse as your primary beneficiary. You can also include any children that may come from your new marriage.
When you’re revising your estate plan, you may take the opportunity to remove your former spouse from your plan. This will spare your current spouse the painful spectacle of discovering that you forgot to name them as a beneficiary. If this should happen, your former spouse will get everything.