When is it the right time to update an estate plan? Technically, as long as it is addressed before you die and while you retain capacity to do so, the timing would be right. However, of course, most of us know that one of the greatest mysteries of our lives is the date (and cause) of death for each of us. Another mystery is whether (and if so, when), we will become incapacitated. So, as a practical matter, the best time to update an estate plan is whenever there is a change in our personal lives that would militate a change to who should receive our property, what is the best structure for leaving such property and/or who should be appointed as fiduciaries to implement our estate plans.

The first encounter most of us have with estate planning is as a young adult, filling out beneficiary designation forms for an IRA, a retirement plan, or life insurance policy. Before our lives get more complicated with spouses and children, most people tend to simply name parents and/or siblings as beneficiaries for such funds. Unfortunately, sometimes people neglect to make updates to such forms, as they truly would have wanted to do, and assets end up passing to the “wrong” beneficiaries at death. In Pennsylvania, we have a law that makes provisions for “pretermitted” spouses or children who are not included in a will that is drafted before they were in the life of a decedent, but, such statutory provisions do not extend to beneficiary designation forms.

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