Short answer: Update your estate plan when your family, your assets, or the law underneath it changes, not on a fixed calendar. A will or trust signed years ago still reflects the marriage, the address, and the tax rules in place on the day you signed it. The federal estate and gift tax exemption alone sits at $15,000,000 per person for 2026 under Internal Revenue Code § 2010(c), a figure that has shifted repeatedly over the past decade. If your documents predate the last shift, they may not say what you think they say.
Which life events should send you back to your attorney?
Marriage and divorce are the two clearest triggers. California is a community property state, and a spouse you add or remove changes who has authority over your finances and who inherits by default. A new child or grandchild, the death of a named executor, trustee, or agent, or a move out of California all call for the same review. Estate planning rules are not uniform from state to state, and a plan drafted for California may not function the way you expect once you have relocated.
The death or incapacity of anyone named in your documents, whether as executor, trustee, guardian, or agent under a power of attorney, deserves prompt attention. A plan that still names someone who can no longer serve leaves your family guessing at exactly the moment they can least afford it.
Does a change in the law actually require action?
Yes, and the law moves on its own schedule. Property tax rules are a good example. Under Proposition 19, a parent-child transfer of a home keeps the parent’s lower property tax base only if the child moves into the home as a principal residence within one year of the transfer and files for the homeowners’ exemption, under California Constitution article XIII A section 2.1 and Revenue and Taxation Code § 63.2. The exclusion is also capped: for transfers occurring February 16, 2025 through February 15, 2027, the cap is the home’s factored base year value plus $1,044,586, and that cap resets every two years. A plan built around an older number may no longer match current law.
Federal transfer tax law changes on its own timetable too. The 2026 annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per recipient, per donor, under Rev. Proc. 2025-32, and $38,000 for a married couple who elects to split gifts. California itself has no state estate tax and no state inheritance tax, under Revenue and Taxation Code § 13301, which is easy to forget if you have not looked at your plan since the federal exemption was a fraction of today’s $15,000,000 figure.
Figures verified July 2026.
What happens if you never update your beneficiary designations?
Assets held in joint tenancy, payable-on-death or transfer-on-death accounts, and life insurance or retirement accounts with a named beneficiary generally pass outside of probate, straight to whoever is named on the account, regardless of what your will or trust says. An ex-spouse still listed on a life insurance policy or a retirement account will receive that money even if your trust leaves everything to your current spouse and children. These forms are easy to forget because you fill them out once, with a bank or an HR department, and rarely see them again.
The fix is mechanical, not legal: pull the current beneficiary designation on every account, insurance policy, and retirement plan and confirm it still matches your intentions, every time a major relationship in your life changes.
If I already have a trust, am I finished?
Not automatically. A will, by itself, does not avoid probate, it only takes effect once a court validates it through the probate process. A revocable living trust can avoid probate, but only for the assets actually retitled into it. A trust that is never funded, meaning the house, the accounts, and other assets were never moved into the trust’s name, does not avoid probate for whatever was left out. Every time you buy a new asset, refinance a home, or open a new account, that asset needs to be checked against your trust to see whether it belongs there.
Should I revisit my incapacity documents too?
Yes, and not only your will or trust. A durable power of attorney and an advance health care directive name the people who will make financial and medical decisions if you cannot. If the person you named has died, moved away, or is no longer someone you trust with that authority, the document is stale even if the rest of your plan is current. The same goes for named guardians for minor children. Review these documents alongside your will or trust rather than treating them as a one-time task.
What to do next
Pull your existing will, trust, powers of attorney, and beneficiary designations and read them against your current family, assets, and address. If anything has changed since you signed them, or you cannot remember the last time you looked, that is the review point, not a date on the calendar. A trust health check or a meeting with an estate planning attorney can tell you quickly whether your plan still works or needs a rewrite.
Want a straight read on where you stand?
Talk to Eric. A free 30-minute call, no pitch. He’ll tell you where you’re exposed, what it would cost to fix, and what you can skip.
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