When to Review Your Estate Plan: Ensure Your Family’s Future

Short answer: Review your estate plan after any major change to your marriage, your family, or your assets, not on a fixed calendar. A will does not update itself, and neither does a trust, a beneficiary designation, or a power of attorney. In California, only a properly funded revocable living trust keeps your estate out of probate, and an outdated or unfunded one protects your family no better than having no plan at all.

What life events mean it is time to review your plan?

Marriage, divorce, a birth or adoption, or the death of a spouse or named beneficiary are the clearest triggers. California is a community property state, so marriage and divorce change how the law characterizes what you own and who is entitled to it. If your will or trust was signed before a marriage, a divorce, or a child arrived, it may no longer say what you assume it says, and the people named in it may no longer be the people you would choose today.

A significant change in what you own is another trigger. The 2026 federal estate and gift tax exemption is $15,000,000 per person, made permanent under IRC section 2010(c), and California itself has no state estate tax or inheritance tax under Revenue and Taxation Code § 13301. Most families never approach the federal number, but an inheritance, a business sale, a real estate purchase, or a large settlement can change your numbers enough that a plan drafted years ago no longer fits your actual estate.

Why doesn’t updating a will fix everything?

A will requires probate to take effect. It does not avoid probate on its own. Only a properly funded revocable living trust passes assets to your beneficiaries outside of the probate process. If you have a trust but never followed through on retitling your house, your accounts, or your business interest into it, that trust does not avoid probate for whatever was left out. A funding gap is one of the most common reasons a family ends up in probate court despite having paid for a trust.

An estate plan is a set of documents that has to work together and has to match what you actually hold title to. When a document review only looks at the will or only looks at the trust, the gaps between them are what cause problems later.

Does your estate plan actually control who gets what?

Not always. 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 directly to whoever is named on that account or policy, regardless of what your will or trust says. If a beneficiary form still names an ex-spouse, a beneficiary who has since died, or was never filled in at all, that asset follows the form, not your estate plan. Reviewing your will and trust without also pulling your beneficiary designations leaves the biggest risk unchecked.

What about your power of attorney and healthcare directives?

Your durable power of attorney and advance healthcare directive name the people who act for you if you cannot act for yourself. Those documents deserve the same scrutiny as your will and trust. An agent who moved away, an agent you no longer trust, or an agent who has since died leaves you without a functioning plan at exactly the moment you would need one. See our page on power of attorney for how these documents fit into the rest of your plan.

How often should you review your plan, even without a major change?

There is no statute that sets a review deadline. The practical approach is to let the life events above, not the calendar, drive most of your reviews, and to check in periodically between them so a small gap does not sit unnoticed for years. A short review is far less work than fixing a plan after it has already failed to do its job.

Figures verified July 2026.

What to do next

If you cannot remember the last time you looked at your will, your trust, or your beneficiary designations, that alone is a sign you are due for a review. Ridley Law’s trust health check looks at what you already have and tells you plainly what still needs to change. Bring your documents, not just your questions.