Estate planning documents do not expire. A properly executed Florida will remains legally valid decades after it was signed. But legal validity is not the same thing as practical effectiveness. A will that leaves everything to a spouse who has since passed, through a personal representative who has been estranged for ten years, under an asset structure that has completely changed, is a valid document that will produce outcomes nobody intended.
The following seven life events are the ones we see most often in our office — not as the reason a client drafted an estate plan, but as the reason a client is sitting across from us trying to fix what the old one will do.
1. Marriage
Florida's elective share statute (Fla. Stat. § 732.201) gives a surviving spouse the right to claim 30 percent of the augmented estate regardless of what the will says. If your existing documents were drafted before this marriage and leave nothing (or very little) to your new spouse, the elective share right creates a legal entitlement your plan did not account for — and it can override arrangements you made for children or other beneficiaries.
Marriage also triggers Florida's homestead constitutional rules (Art. X, § 4, Fla. Const.), which restrict how residential property can be devised if there is a surviving spouse. A plan drafted before the marriage may not account for those restrictions at all.
2. Divorce
Florida Statute § 732.507(2) automatically revokes any provision of a will that benefits a former spouse upon dissolution of marriage. That is good news for the will. It is not good news for every asset in your estate plan.
Beneficiary designations on life insurance, retirement accounts, IRAs, 401(k)s, and payable-on-death accounts are NOT automatically revoked by divorce under Florida law. If your ex-spouse is still listed as the primary beneficiary on your life insurance policy the day you die, that policy pays out to your ex-spouse — regardless of what your will says, and regardless of the intent of anyone involved. Those designations must be updated manually, on every account, through every institution. Divorce triggers that review immediately.
3. Birth or Adoption of a Child
Florida Statute § 732.302 provides a "pretermitted child" protection for children born or adopted after the execution of a will — but the protection has limits, and it does not apply at all to children who were living when the will was signed if the will clearly omitted them intentionally. More importantly, the pretermitted child statute addresses intestate-style shares; it does not create the trust structures, special-needs protections, or guardian nominations that a comprehensive plan would include.
Every birth or adoption should trigger an update that names the child specifically, addresses any special needs or circumstances, and nominates a guardian for the child's person and estate if both parents die before the child reaches majority.
4. Death of a Named Beneficiary or Fiduciary
If your primary beneficiary has died and your documents do not name a contingent beneficiary, the gift may lapse or fall into the residuary estate — and from there, pass in ways you did not anticipate. If your named personal representative or trustee has died and you have no successor named, the court appoints someone.
Neither of these outcomes requires a crisis. Both require updating your documents before you die — not after.
5. Significant Change in Assets
A large inheritance, the sale of a business, the purchase of real property in another state, or a significant change in net worth can all push an estate across the federal estate tax exemption threshold — or change the structure that makes sense for distribution. A plan designed for a $400,000 estate may not serve a $4,000,000 estate well. Specific bequests that made sense before a business sale may need to be revisited. And any asset acquired after the trust was signed needs to be retitled into the trust — or the plan's probate-avoidance goals are not being achieved.
6. Moving to or from Florida
Florida has specific requirements for wills, powers of attorney, and advance directives that differ from other states. A durable power of attorney drafted in Georgia may technically be valid in Florida — but Florida's "superpower" initials requirements under § 709.2202 mean that many out-of-state documents will not grant the powers a Florida institution will expect to see. Florida homestead rules, elective share law, and trust statutes are Florida-specific. Moving here from another state is a strong signal to have a Florida attorney review your documents within the first year of residency.
7. Major Change in the Law
The federal estate tax exemption, set at $13.61 million per person in 2024, was created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 — and it is scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025 absent new legislation, potentially falling to roughly half its current level. If you are in the range where this matters, the planning that makes sense under current law may look different after the sunset.
The CS/SB 1500 reforms effective July 1, 2026 are a more modest example of the same principle: Florida law changed, and the change affects estate plans, trust funding strategies, and which assets should be held in which form. Reviewing your plan in light of statutory changes is not paranoia. It is maintenance.
