When to Update Your Estate Plan After a Divorce in Florida

If you have recently gone through a divorce, updating your estate plan is probably not at the top of your list. There is a lot to manage after a marriage ends, and legal documents can feel like one more thing to deal with later. The problem is that later can be too late.

Florida law does provide some automatic protection after a divorce. Under Florida's revocation-on-divorce statute, provisions in your will that benefit your former spouse are automatically revoked when the divorce is finalized. That means your ex-spouse will not inherit under your old will simply because you forgot to update it.

But the protection stops there, and the gaps it leaves are significant.

The revocation statute does not apply to beneficiary designations. Life insurance policies, retirement accounts, IRAs, and annuities pass directly to whoever you named as beneficiary on the form you signed, regardless of what your will says and regardless of whether you are divorced. If your former spouse is still listed as the beneficiary on your life insurance policy, they will receive that money when you die. A will cannot override a beneficiary designation.

The same is true for accounts held jointly with a right of survivorship, or accounts titled in transfer-on-death form. These assets pass outside of your estate entirely and are not affected by your will or by the divorce statute.

Beyond beneficiary designations, your power of attorney and health care surrogate designation likely still name your former spouse as the person authorized to make financial and medical decisions for you. Those documents should be revoked and replaced immediately.

If you have children, a divorce is also the moment to think carefully about guardianship and how your assets are structured to provide for them. If your children are minors and you die, you will generally want to make sure assets pass to them in a way that does not require their other parent to manage funds on their behalf.

A divorce changes almost every assumption that went into your original estate plan. The sooner you address it, the more control you keep over what happens next.