Estate Planning After Divorce

Your divorce cancels some parts of your estate plan (your will, and maybe your trust) but not others. First, if you don’t have a will or an estate plan at all, you should. Divorce won’t change that, but it will cancel any right your spouse has to any of your assets when you die.

If you do have a will, the divorce will automatically cancel any specific gifts to your ex-spouse that you put in the will, along with any fiduciary roles – such as executor of your estate – that you named. The rest of your will remains valid.

However, you may have named your spouse as the beneficiary of certain accounts – like a 401k, an IRA, or a bank account. You might not even remember doing this, but a Vermont divorce decree does not automatically update those designations. That means that if you die after your divorce, your ex-spouse could still get your retirements, your life insurance and your bank accounts.

A divorce also does not change any trusts you set up as part of your estate plan. So you may have set up a careful estate plan in order to remove your ex from trusts and accounts. You should also update your will even though Vermont does have some protections around divorced spouses inheriting assets.

The divorce does revoke an advanced health care directive that names your ex-spouse as your health care agent.

After your divorce, definitely update your Vermont Advance Directive, refresh your Last Will and Testament, modify any trusts you have created, and submit new beneficiary designation forms directly to your life insurance providers and financial institutions.