Updating Your Estate Plan After Divorce, Marriage, or a Move to Florida

Updating your estate plan after divorce, marriage, or a move to Florida means revisiting your will, trusts, beneficiary designations, and powers of attorney so they reflect your current family, your current assets, and the law of your new home state. Florida statutes automatically void some gifts to a former spouse, but they do not fix everything — and they do nothing about the 401(k) beneficiary form you signed a decade ago. The clean answer: any of these three life events should trigger a full review within a few months, not a vague intention to “get around to it.”

I have sat across the conference table from more than one widow who learned, after the funeral, that her late husband’s life insurance still named his first wife. The policy paid the ex. There was nothing the surviving spouse could do, because a beneficiary designation is a contract that overrides the will. That is the cost of treating an estate plan as a one-time document instead of a living one. For physicians and other professionals in Miami-Dade — people with practices, partnership interests, malpractice exposure, and assets in multiple states — the stakes are higher and the moving parts are more numerous.

Why these three events specifically demand a review

Most estate plans drift slowly out of date. A new grandchild, a refinanced house, a brokerage account opened on a whim — individually, none of these usually breaks a plan. Divorce, marriage, and relocation are different. Each one rewrites the legal assumptions your documents were built on.

• Divorce removes a person you almost certainly named as your primary beneficiary, your personal representative, your health-care surrogate, and your agent under a power of attorney — often all four.
• Marriage (or remarriage) introduces a new person with statutory rights you cannot fully disinherit, plus stepchildren, blended-family tensions, and frequently a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement that interacts with your plan.
• Moving to Florida changes which state’s law governs your estate, your homestead protections, your spouse’s elective share, and the formalities your documents must satisfy to be honored without a fight.

Each deserves its own discussion, because the right fix is different in each case.

Updating your estate plan after divorce in Florida

Florida law gives you a partial safety net here, and it is important to understand exactly where the net ends.

What the statute does automatically

Under Florida Statutes section 732.507(2), a divorce or annulment voids any provision in your will that leaves property to your former spouse or names them to serve in a fiduciary role — as if the ex-spouse had died at the moment the dissolution became final. Section 736.1105 applies a parallel rule to revocable trusts. So if your old will left everything to your now-ex and named her personal representative, the law reads her out and the plan proceeds as though she predeceased you.

Florida also addresses certain non-probate assets. Section 732.703 revokes a former spouse’s designation as beneficiary on assets like life insurance, annuities, payable-on-death accounts, and similar instruments governed by Florida law, effective on the date the marriage is dissolved.

What the statute does not fix

This is where physicians get burned, because so much of their wealth sits in places the Florida revocation statute cannot reach.

• ERISA-governed retirement plans. Your employer 401(k), 403(b), pension, and many group life policies are governed by federal ERISA law. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Egelhoff v. Egelhoff and again in Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont that the plan pays whoever is named on the form — state revocation statutes are preempted. If your ex is still on the form, your ex gets the money.
• Assets in other states may not be covered by Florida’s statute at all.
• Your nominated guardians, health-care surrogate, and agent under a durable power of attorney still need affirmative replacement. You do not want a hospital calling your ex-spouse to make your end-of-life decisions because nobody updated the surrogate form.

The lesson is simple and unforgiving: the statute is a backstop, not a plan. After a divorce you should personally re-paper your will, revocable trust, every beneficiary designation, your durable power of attorney, your designation of health-care surrogate, and your living will. If minor children are involved, revisit the guardianship nomination and consider whether assets should flow into a trust rather than outright to a young adult.

Updating your estate plan after marriage or remarriage

Marriage is the mirror image of divorce: instead of stripping someone out, you are bringing someone in — and Florida law grants that someone rights you cannot simply ignore.

The pretermitted spouse problem

If you made your will before the marriage and never updated it, your new spouse may qualify as a pretermitted spouse under Florida Statutes section 732.301. That spouse is entitled to a share of your estate equal to what they would have received had you died without a will — typically a substantial portion — unless the will provided for them, the omission was intentional and stated, or a valid marital agreement waived the right. People are routinely surprised that a stale will can be partly overridden by a marriage they forgot to account for.

The elective share

Even with an up-to-date will, Florida does not let you disinherit a surviving spouse. Under the elective share statute (sections 732.201–732.2155), a surviving spouse may claim 30% of the elective estate, a broad figure that reaches well beyond the probate estate to include revocable trust assets, certain jointly held property, and some retirement and insurance benefits. For a physician with a large 401(k) and a brokerage account, the elective estate can be far bigger than what the will itself controls. The cleanest way to set clear expectations in a blended family is usually a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement that validly waives elective and pretermitted rights — and then an estate plan drafted to match it.

Blended families and the children from a prior marriage

The recurring heartbreak in second marriages is the “I love you” will — everything to the new spouse, then to the kids when the spouse dies. The trouble is that once your assets pass outright to your spouse, they are your spouse’s to redirect, and the children from your first marriage have no enforceable claim. A properly drafted marital trust or QTIP trust lets you provide for your spouse for life while guaranteeing that the remainder passes to your own children. If a child or other beneficiary has a disability and receives means-tested benefits, leaving assets outright can disqualify them — a solves that, and the same drafting principles apply whether the beneficiary lives in Florida or New York.

Updating your estate plan after a move to Florida

This is the event people most often skip, on the theory that “a will is a will.” It is also the one that quietly produces the most expensive surprises, because moving changes the governing law, not just the address on the document.

Your old documents are probably valid — but possibly inconvenient

Florida generally honors a will that was validly executed under the law of the state where you signed it. The practical problem is the self-proving affidavit. Florida’s requirements (section 732.503) are specific, and a will from another state that lacks a proper Florida-style affidavit can force your personal representative to track down witnesses years later to prove the will — an avoidable cost and delay. Re-executing your will in Florida with the correct formalities eliminates that headache.

Powers of attorney are the bigger trap

Florida overhauled its power-of-attorney law in 2011, and the state’s institutions — banks, brokerages, title companies, hospitals — are accustomed to the Florida form. An out-of-state durable power of attorney is often technically valid yet practically useless, because the institution refuses to honor an unfamiliar document the day you actually need it. The same friction applies to health-care surrogate designations. Re-doing these on Florida forms is low-cost insurance.

Homestead: Florida’s signature protection and signature trap

Florida’s homestead rules are unlike anything in most other states, and they cut both ways:

1. Creditor protection. The Florida Constitution (Article X, Section 4) shields your homestead from most creditors without acreage-value limits — a meaningful asset-protection benefit for physicians worried about malpractice exposure.
2. Restrictions on devise. If you are married or have minor children, the constitution sharply limits how you can leave your homestead. You generally cannot will the home away from your spouse or minor child the way you might assume. A New York-style plan that tries to drop the house into a trust can run headlong into these rules and produce an unintended result.

Because homestead interacts with your spouse’s rights, your trust, and your creditors all at once, it is the single most important reason to have a Florida attorney review documents drafted elsewhere.

One more thing in Florida’s favor

Florida has no state estate tax and no state income tax. The federal estate tax still applies above the lifetime exemption, so high-net-worth physicians should keep federal planning current. But the move itself often improves your tax posture, which is all the more reason to make sure the rest of the plan is built correctly to capture the benefit.

A practical checklist after any of the three events

When a divorce, marriage, or relocation lands, work through this list rather than guessing at which documents are affected:

• Will and any codicils — re-execute with Florida formalities and a self-proving affidavit.
• Revocable living trust and pour-over will — confirm trustees, successor trustees, and distribution terms still reflect reality.
• Beneficiary designations on life insurance, annuities, IRAs, 401(k)/403(b), HSAs, and POD/TOD accounts — the most commonly overlooked, and the ones that override your will.
• Durable power of attorney — replace a former spouse; switch to a Florida form after a move.
• Designation of health-care surrogate and living will — update the agent and the Florida formalities.
• Guardianship nominations for minor children.
• Any marital agreement (pre- or post-nuptial) and confirmation that the plan is consistent with it.
• For practice owners: buy-sell agreements, business succession provisions, and entity beneficiary designations.

If you want a deeper walkthrough of the foundational documents, our overview of Florida wills and what they can and cannot do is a useful starting point. For coordinated planning across state lines, Morgan Legal’s Florida team handles for clients here, and our New York colleagues handle the — which matters more than people expect, because many Miami physicians keep property, accounts, or family ties up north.

The professional’s blind spot: assets in two states

Physicians and other professionals are disproportionately likely to own property in more than one state — a Miami residence and a co-op back in New York, say, or a vacation home elsewhere. Real property is governed by the law of the state where it sits, which means out-of-state real estate can drag your estate into a second, ancillary probate proceeding in that state. Retitling that property into a revocable trust during your lifetime usually avoids the second probate entirely. This is exactly the kind of coordination that gets missed when someone treats a Florida move as a purely local event.

None of this is a do-it-yourself project, and online form kits cannot reason about homestead, the elective share, ERISA preemption, or multi-state property. The good news is that fixing a plan after one of these life events is far cheaper than litigating the mess afterward. If you have recently divorced, married, or moved to Florida, schedule a review and bring your current documents — including those beneficiary forms you have not looked at in years.

Frequently asked questions

Does a Florida divorce automatically remove my ex-spouse from my will?
Yes, in part. Florida Statutes section 732.507(2) treats your former spouse as if they died when the divorce was finalized, voiding gifts to them and their appointment as a fiduciary. But the statute does not reach ERISA retirement accounts and may not cover out-of-state assets, so you still must update those beneficiary forms yourself.

Is my out-of-state will valid after I move to Florida?
Generally yes — Florida honors a will validly executed under another state’s law. The practical issue is that it may lack a Florida self-proving affidavit, and your out-of-state powers of attorney may not be honored by Florida banks and hospitals, so re-executing on Florida forms is strongly recommended.

How long do I have to update my estate plan after one of these events?
There is no hard legal deadline, but the risk starts the day the event occurs. Because a death or incapacity in the interim locks in whatever your documents currently say, the right standard is to complete a full review within a few months — sooner if the change is contentious.

Can my new spouse override my old will if I do not update it?
Potentially. A spouse omitted from a pre-marriage will may claim a pretermitted share under section 732.301, and any surviving spouse can elect 30% of the elective estate under Florida’s elective share statute. A valid prenuptial or postnuptial agreement and a matching estate plan are the way to set clear, enforceable expectations.

Why do beneficiary designations matter more than my will?
Because they control the asset directly. Life insurance, annuities, and retirement accounts pass to whoever is named on the form, independent of — and overriding — what your will says. An outdated designation is the single most common way an ex-spouse or unintended person ends up inheriting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a Florida divorce automatically remove my ex-spouse from my will?

Yes, in part. Florida Statutes section 732.507(2) treats your former spouse as if they died when the divorce was finalized, voiding gifts to them and their appointment as a fiduciary. But the statute does not reach ERISA retirement accounts and may not cover out-of-state assets, so you still must update those beneficiary forms yourself.

Is my out-of-state will valid after I move to Florida?

Generally yes — Florida honors a will validly executed under another state’s law. The practical issue is that it may lack a Florida self-proving affidavit, and your out-of-state powers of attorney may not be honored by Florida banks and hospitals, so re-executing on Florida forms is strongly recommended.

How long do I have to update my estate plan after one of these events?

There is no hard legal deadline, but the risk starts the day the event occurs. Because a death or incapacity in the interim locks in whatever your documents currently say, the right standard is to complete a full review within a few months — sooner if the change is contentious.

Can my new spouse override my old will if I do not update it?

Potentially. A spouse omitted from a pre-marriage will may claim a pretermitted share under section 732.301, and any surviving spouse can elect 30% of the elective estate under Florida’s elective share statute. A valid prenuptial or postnuptial agreement and a matching estate plan are the way to set clear, enforceable expectations.

Why do beneficiary designations matter more than my will?

Because they control the asset directly. Life insurance, annuities, and retirement accounts pass to whoever is named on the form, independent of — and overriding — what your will says. An outdated designation is the single most common way an ex-spouse or unintended person ends up inheriting.