When and Why to Review Your Florida Estate Plan

You should review your Florida estate plan every three to five years and after any major life or financial change — a move, a marriage, a death, a new property, or a shift in the tax law. The reason is simple: an estate plan is a snapshot of your life and the law on the day you signed it, and both keep moving. A plan that was airtight in 2018 can quietly become a liability by the time anyone needs to use it.

For people who own property in more than one state, or who split the year between Florida and somewhere up north, this is not a tidy housekeeping chore. The interplay between Florida law and the law of your other home state is where the expensive surprises live. Below is how I think about timing these reviews, and what actually changes when you don’t.

What “reviewing” a Florida estate plan really means

A review is not the same as a rewrite. Most of the time, you are confirming that four things still line up: your documents (will, revocable trust, durable power of attorney, health care surrogate, living will), your beneficiary designations (retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, transfer-on-death accounts), your titling (how each asset is actually held), and your people (the personal representative, trustee, agent, and guardians you named).

Those four pieces drift apart over time without anyone touching the documents. You refinance a house and the title changes. You roll over a 401(k) and the beneficiary form resets. Your named trustee moves to Oregon and stops returning calls. None of that shows up in the binder on your shelf, which is exactly why the binder lies to you if you only read the will.

The calendar trigger: every three to five years

Even if nothing dramatic has happened in your life, the law underneath your plan keeps shifting. The federal estate and gift tax exemption is indexed to inflation and is scheduled to change; Florida’s homestead, elective share, and probate rules get amended; and the institutions holding your accounts revise their own forms and procedures. A periodic review catches the slow drift before it hardens into a problem.

Three to five years is a sensible default. Tighten that to every two or three years if your estate is large enough to brush against the federal exemption, if you own a business, or if you own real estate in multiple states. Stretch it slightly if your life is genuinely static and your assets are simple. The point of the calendar is to force a look even when nothing has obviously gone wrong.

Life events that should trigger an immediate review

Some changes can’t wait for the calendar. When one of these happens, review the plan within a few months — not “someday.”

• You moved to Florida (or moved away). Establishing Florida domicile changes which state’s law governs your will, your homestead protection, your elective share, and your tax exposure. A will validly executed in another state is generally honored in Florida, but a few features — self-proving affidavits, witnessing formalities, and out-of-state trustee or personal representative restrictions — deserve a fresh look once you’re a Floridian.
• Marriage, remarriage, or divorce. Florida automatically voids gifts and fiduciary appointments to a former spouse on divorce under section 732.507 of the Florida Statutes, but that protection has gaps — it does not reach all beneficiary designations, and it does nothing for an unmarried partner. Remarriage raises the elective share and homestead questions that catch blended families off guard.
• A birth, adoption, or a beneficiary’s death. New heirs need to be added intentionally; deceased beneficiaries need to be removed before a contingent gift lands somewhere you never intended.
• A child or beneficiary develops special needs. An outright inheritance can disqualify someone from means-tested benefits. This is a same-week conversation, not a same-year one.
• A large change in net worth. Selling a business, receiving an inheritance, or a serious downturn can all change whether your plan still does what you wanted.
• You bought, sold, or refinanced real estate. Especially out-of-state property, which I’ll come back to.

Why out-of-state property owners need to review more often

This is the heart of it for Miami’s many dual-state and seasonal residents. If you own a co-op in Manhattan, a lake house in Michigan, or a condo back in New Jersey, that property is governed by the law of the state where it sits — not by Florida, and not by your Florida will alone.

Real property owned in your individual name in another state typically requires ancillary probate there: a second, separate court proceeding in addition to your Florida estate administration. That means two sets of lawyers, two timelines, and two sets of fees, often at the worst possible moment for your family. The usual fix is to retitle out-of-state real estate into a revocable living trust or, where appropriate, into another non-probate form of ownership — but those choices have to be made deliberately and revisited whenever you buy or sell.

New York property, in particular, has its own planning tools that don’t exist in Florida and that a Florida-only plan won’t address. If your roots are in New York, it’s worth coordinating with counsel who handles those mechanics directly — for example, the use of a for benefit preservation, or a to pass the property while keeping the right to live there. Florida residents with northern real estate frequently need both a Florida plan and a coordinated out-of-state strategy that actually talk to each other.

Florida homestead is its own moving target

Florida’s homestead protections — the constitutional creditor exemption and the restrictions on devising a homestead when you have a spouse or minor child — are unusually powerful and unusually rigid. Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution limits how you can leave your homestead, and a will provision that ignores those limits is simply unenforceable as to that property. If you’ve married, had a child, or bought a new primary residence since you last signed, your homestead devise is a prime candidate for review.

Law changes that quietly outdate a plan

You don’t have to track legislation yourself, but it helps to understand the categories that move:

1. Federal transfer taxes. The estate and gift tax exemption is large today but indexed and subject to scheduled sunsets. Plans built around a specific exemption amount — formula clauses, credit-shelter trusts, marital deduction funding — can misfire badly when the number shifts. These deserve a look whenever Congress acts.
2. Retirement account rules. The SECURE Act changed how inherited IRAs pay out, largely eliminating the lifetime “stretch” for many non-spouse beneficiaries. If your trust was drafted as a conduit for retirement assets before that change, it may now produce a tax result you never intended.
3. Florida statutory updates. The Florida Probate Code (Chapter 732) and Florida Trust Code (Chapter 736) are amended periodically — elective share calculations, electronic wills under section 732.522, and remote-witnessing rules have all evolved in recent years.
4. Digital assets and access. Florida adopted a version of the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740), which governs whether your executor can reach your online accounts. Older documents often say nothing about this.

The documents people forget to check

Wills get the attention, but the documents that actually run your life if you’re incapacitated are the durable power of attorney and the health care surrogate designation. Florida tightened its power-of-attorney law under Chapter 709; many banks and brokerages now scrutinize these instruments closely and may balk at one that looks dated or that lacks specific superpowers spelled out as the statute requires. An old durable power of attorney that a bank refuses to honor is functionally useless on the day you need it most.

Beneficiary designations deserve their own audit because they override your will. The life insurance policy still naming your ex-spouse, the IRA naming a child who has since passed, the bank account with no payable-on-death beneficiary at all — these are the quiet failures I see most often, and they are also the easiest to fix once someone looks.

What a thorough review covers

When we sit down to review a plan, we’re walking through a checklist that looks roughly like this:

• Are the named fiduciaries — personal representative, trustee, agent under the power of attorney, health care surrogate — still alive, willing, capable, and a sensible choice today? Note that Florida restricts who may serve as a personal representative for non-relatives who live out of state.
• Does the titling of each major asset match the plan? A revocable trust does nothing for a house that was never deeded into it.
• Do beneficiary designations align with the overall plan, or do they cut across it?
• Is any out-of-state real estate exposed to ancillary probate, and should it be retitled?
• Do the homestead provisions comply with current Florida constitutional limits?
• Have tax-driven provisions kept pace with current exemptions and the SECURE Act?
• Are guardianship nominations for minor children still the right ones?

If you’d like a walk-through of how this works specifically for Florida residents, our handles these reviews regularly, and you can also read more about the building blocks on our wills and trusts page or learn how administration unfolds on our Florida probate page.

What happens if you skip the review

The cost of an outdated plan is rarely a single dramatic failure. It’s an accumulation: the wrong person inherits because a beneficiary form was never updated; an out-of-state condo triggers a second probate no one budgeted for; a bank rejects a stale power of attorney and the family scrambles for guardianship; a homestead devise is void and the property passes by a statutory default the deceased would have hated. Each of these is preventable with a periodic look. None of them is fixable after the fact.

An estate plan is not a document you finish. It’s a system you maintain. Put a recurring reminder on the calendar, and treat every major life or property change as the prompt it is. If you’re a Florida resident with assets or roots in another state, the maintenance matters more, not less — and a short review now is far cheaper than the cleanup later. Reach out when something on this page describes your situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I review my Florida estate plan?

As a default, review your plan every three to five years even if nothing has changed, and tighten that to every two or three years if you have a large estate, own a business, or own real estate in more than one state. Beyond the calendar, review immediately after any major life event such as a move, marriage, divorce, birth, death, or a significant change in your assets.

Does my Florida estate plan automatically cover property I own in another state?

No. Real property is governed by the law of the state where it sits, so an out-of-state home owned in your individual name typically requires a separate ancillary probate proceeding in that state, in addition to your Florida administration. Retitling that property into a revocable trust or another non-probate form is the usual way to avoid a second court process and a second set of fees.

Will my out-of-state will still be valid after I move to Florida?

Generally yes. Florida recognizes a will that was validly executed under the law of the state where it was signed. Even so, it is worth a fresh review after establishing Florida domicile to confirm self-proving affidavits, witnessing formalities, homestead provisions, and your choice of out-of-state fiduciaries still work cleanly under Florida law.

What law changes can make an estate plan outdated?

The main categories are federal transfer taxes (the estate and gift tax exemption is indexed and subject to scheduled sunsets), retirement account rules (the SECURE Act largely eliminated the lifetime stretch for many inherited IRAs), updates to the Florida Probate and Trust Codes, and digital-asset access rules under Florida’s Chapter 740. Tax-driven formula clauses and retirement-account trusts are especially vulnerable to these shifts.

Which documents do people most often forget to update?

Beneficiary designations on life insurance, IRAs, and payable-on-death accounts, because they override your will; durable powers of attorney, which banks may reject if they look dated under Florida’s Chapter 709; and fiduciary appointments where the named trustee or agent has moved, died, or is no longer a sensible choice.