You should update your will after any major life event that changes who you love, what you own, or where you live, and otherwise review it every three to five years. Knowing when to update your will matters because state default rules can quietly rewrite an outdated document: a new spouse can claim an intestate share, a divorce can void provisions and leave gaps, and a sold asset can turn a named gift into nothing. The sections below walk through the events that should pull your will off the shelf.
Marriage, Divorce, and Partners
Getting married without updating your will is one of the most common estate planning mistakes. In many states, a new spouse who isn’t mentioned in an existing will is treated as an “omitted spouse” and becomes entitled to a share of the estate roughly equal to what they would have received under intestacy law, regardless of what your will actually says. That share comes at the expense of the people you originally named. In a handful of states, marriage goes further and revokes the prior will entirely.
Remarriage with children from a prior relationship raises the stakes. Without a will that explicitly addresses both your new spouse and your existing children, default rules can funnel assets to the new spouse while leaving your children with little or nothing.
Divorce reshapes a will too, though less completely than people assume. Most states automatically void provisions benefiting a former spouse, treating the ex-spouse as if they had predeceased you. Gifts, executor appointments, and trustee roles all drop out. The rest of the will survives. If your ex-spouse was the only beneficiary, the voided provisions can leave portions of your estate with no designated recipient and push them into intestacy. Some states also void gifts to the ex-spouse’s relatives named as alternates. Updating after a divorce is damage control.
Unmarried partners face a different problem. Without a will that names them, a long-term partner generally inherits nothing, because intestacy distributes assets to legal spouses, children, parents, and siblings. Even in states that recognize common-law marriage, proving that relationship in probate court is expensive and uncertain.
New Children and Guardianship
A will does not automatically expand to cover children born or adopted after it was signed. Most states have “omitted child” statutes that protect after-born children by granting them an intestate-equivalent share, but only if the omission was accidental. If your will was clearly written to exclude future children, or if you provided for the child outside the will, the protection may not apply.1Legal Information Institute. Omitted Child Statutes
Relying on those statutes is a gamble. The default share may not match what you would want and can disrupt the distribution you planned for other beneficiaries. Adding the child explicitly lets you control amounts, set conditions, or establish a trust.
Guardianship designations deserve the same attention. If you named a guardian when your children were toddlers, that person may no longer be the right choice a decade later. Health changes, relocations, strained relationships, or a shift in parenting philosophy are all reasons to revisit the choice. A court will honor your designation absent a strong reason not to, so keeping it current means keeping your children with someone you actually trust.
A beneficiary’s own circumstances can also trigger an update. A beneficiary who develops a disability may lose eligibility for government benefits if they receive an outright inheritance; a special needs trust preserves both, but only if your will creates one. A beneficiary dealing with addiction, creditor problems, or financial instability may be better served by a trust with a third-party trustee than by an unrestricted gift.
Changes in What You Own
When your will leaves a specific item to a specific person — a house to your daughter, a business interest to your brother — and you later sell that item, the gift fails. This is called ademption: the beneficiary gets nothing in place of the missing property because the bequest was tied to an asset that no longer exists in your estate.2Legal Information Institute. Ademption by Extinction If you’ve sold real estate, closed a business, or liquidated a collection since drafting your will, check whether any specific bequests now point at assets you no longer own.
The reverse matters just as much. Acquiring significant new assets — a second home, an inheritance, a business — means your will may not account for a large portion of your wealth. Without instructions, those assets fall into whatever residuary clause your will contains, or into intestacy if there’s no residuary clause at all.
Beneficiary Designations Your Will Cannot Override
This is where most estate plans quietly fall apart. Life insurance policies, 401(k)s, IRAs, annuities, and payable-on-death bank accounts all pass directly to the person named on the beneficiary designation form, not the person named in your will. Your will has no authority over these assets. If you updated your will to leave everything to your new spouse but never changed the beneficiary on your 401(k), that account still goes to whoever is on the form, which could be an ex-spouse or a deceased parent.
Every time you update your will, pull out the beneficiary designation forms for retirement accounts, life insurance, and anything with transfer-on-death or payable-on-death features. Make sure the names match your current intentions. This five-minute check prevents what is probably the single most common estate planning failure.
Moving to a New State
A will validly executed in one state is generally recognized in another, so a cross-state move doesn’t invalidate your existing will. But state laws differ in ways that cause real friction during probate. Some states require two witnesses; others require a notarized self-proving affidavit. Some states restrict who can serve as executor, and a few bar non-residents from serving, which becomes a problem if your named executor lives in your old state. Community property states and common law property states treat marital assets very differently, which can reshape how your estate is distributed.
After moving, have a local attorney review your will against your new state’s probate rules. Even if no substantive changes are needed, adding a self-proving affidavit (a notarized statement signed by you and your witnesses) can streamline probate by eliminating the need for your witnesses to appear in court after your death.3Legal Information Institute. Self-Proving Will
The 2026 Federal Estate Tax Exemption
The federal estate and gift tax exemption for 2026 is $15,000,000 per person, or $30,000,000 for a married couple. This amount, set by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, replaces the temporary increase under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025. The new exemption is permanent and will be adjusted for inflation beginning in 2027.4Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax
For most families, the higher exemption means federal estate tax is not a concern. But if your will or trust was drafted with tax-minimization strategies based on the older, lower exemption, such as credit shelter trusts, A-B trust splits, or formula clauses tied to the exemption amount, those provisions may now operate differently than intended. A formula clause that funnels “the maximum amount sheltered from estate tax” into a bypass trust could now direct $15 million away from a surviving spouse who was supposed to be the primary beneficiary. Anyone with an estate plan built around tax thresholds should have it reviewed.
Digital Assets
Cryptocurrency, online brokerage accounts, digital media libraries, domain names, and social media accounts can vanish if no one knows how to access them after your death. Unlike a house or a bank account, there is often no institution that will cooperate with an executor holding a death certificate. If the private keys to a crypto wallet are lost, the assets are gone permanently.
Most states have adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which allows executors and trustees to manage digital assets when the owner authorized access in estate planning documents. The law only helps if your estate plan actually addresses digital assets. At a minimum, your will or a separate document should list your digital accounts and assets, name someone to manage them, and provide a path to credentials. Do not put passwords or private keys directly in your will, since wills become public during probate. A secure password manager, encrypted file, or hardware vault with instructions given separately to your executor is the safer approach.
Codicil or New Will
You have two options for changing a will: a codicil or a new will. A codicil is a separate document that amends specific provisions, such as swapping an executor, adding a beneficiary, or changing a dollar amount, without rewriting the whole will. It must be signed and witnessed with the same formalities as the original. Codicils work for one or two small changes, but after multiple amendments, anyone reading the plan has to piece together the original plus each change, and contradictions invite litigation.
For anything beyond a minor tweak, a new will is better. Include a revocation clause explicitly stating that it revokes all prior wills and codicils. Without that clause, a court has to compare the old and new documents and treat the new will as revoking the old one only where the two are inconsistent, which adds time, cost, and ambiguity.
How Often to Review Your Will
Estate planning professionals generally recommend a full review every three to five years, even when nothing dramatic has happened. Small changes accumulate: a beneficiary moves, an executor ages, asset values shift, tax laws are amended. Any one of them can quietly undermine a will that looked solid when it was signed.
Beyond the calendar, any of the following events should trigger an immediate review:
- Marriage, divorce, or the death of a spouse
- Birth or adoption of a child or grandchild
- Death or incapacity of a named executor, trustee, or guardian
- A significant change in the value of your estate
- Buying or selling a major asset like a home or business
- Moving to a different state
- A change in federal or state tax law affecting estates
- A serious change in a beneficiary’s health, finances, or relationship with you
If you haven’t looked at your will since it was signed, the odds are good that at least one provision no longer does what you intended. The cost of a review is trivial compared to the cost of a probate dispute or an inheritance landing in the wrong hands.