Updating your estate plan after divorce, marriage, or a move to Florida means reviewing and revising your will, trusts, powers of attorney, health care directives, and—just as important—your beneficiary designations so they match your new family and your new home state’s law. A major life change can quietly invalidate parts of an old plan or, worse, leave an outdated one fully in force. In Florida, divorce automatically voids gifts and fiduciary appointments to an ex-spouse, while a new marriage can hand a surprised survivor a large statutory share you never intended.
I practice estate planning here in Palm Beach County, and the clients who keep me up at night aren’t the ones who never made a plan. They’re the ones who made a good plan in 2009, got divorced in 2015, remarried in 2019, retired to Florida in 2023—and never touched a single document. The plan still exists. It just no longer describes their life. This article walks through what actually needs to change after each of these three events, with particular attention to blended families and second marriages, where the gap between “what the documents say” and “what you’d want” is usually widest.
Why divorce, remarriage, and relocation each trigger a review
Estate plans are snapshots. They freeze your intentions, your beneficiaries, and your fiduciaries as of the day you signed. Three events shift the ground underneath that snapshot more than almost anything else:
- Divorce removes a person you almost certainly named everywhere—executor, trustee, agent under a power of attorney, health care surrogate, and primary beneficiary.
- Marriage adds a person the law now protects whether or not your documents mention them, creating spousal rights that can override your will.
- Relocating to Florida swaps the entire legal rulebook that governs your plan, from homestead protection to how a will must be witnessed to whether your out-of-state trust still does what you think it does.
Any one of these is reason enough to sit down with an attorney. Many of my clients have lived through all three in the span of a decade, often in exactly that order.
Updating your estate plan after divorce in Florida
Florida law gives divorced people a helpful default—but it is only a default, and it does not reach everything.
What Florida law changes automatically
Under Florida Statutes section 732.507(2), a divorce or annulment automatically voids any provision in your will that benefits your former spouse, treating the ex-spouse as if they had died before you. A parallel rule in section 732.703 revokes most beneficiary designations in favor of an ex-spouse on assets like life insurance, annuities, and certain payable-on-death accounts. And section 736.1105 applies a similar revocation to revocable trusts. The Legislature assumed—reasonably—that you no longer want your ex inheriting from you.
What divorce does not fix on its own
This is where people get hurt. The automatic revocation statutes have real gaps:
- Powers of attorney and health care surrogate designations. Your ex may still be legally empowered to make financial and medical decisions for you until you revoke and replace those documents.
- ERISA-governed retirement plans. Federal law preempts the Florida revocation statute for 401(k)s and many employer pension plans. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Egelhoff v. Egelhoff and later Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont confirmed that the plan pays whoever is named on the beneficiary form—even an ex-spouse—regardless of state law. You must affirmatively change the form with the plan administrator.
- Your ex-spouse’s relatives. If your will named your former mother-in-law as a backup, or your ex’s children as contingent beneficiaries, those choices may survive unless you revisit them.
- Jointly titled property and existing trusts. Title and trust terms don’t update themselves.
The cleanest approach after divorce is not to lean on the default statutes at all. Sign a new will, a new power of attorney, a new health care surrogate, and walk through every beneficiary form on every account. Relying on Florida’s automatic revocation is like relying on your car’s airbag instead of your brakes—it might save you, but you don’t aim for the situation where you need it.
Updating your estate plan after a new marriage or remarriage
Marriage is the mirror image of divorce. Instead of removing a protected person, it adds one—and Florida protects spouses aggressively.
The pretermitted spouse trap
Suppose you have a will from before your marriage and you never update it. Under Florida’s pretermitted spouse statute, section 732.301, your new spouse is generally entitled to the share they would have received if you had died with no will at all—often a substantial portion of your estate—unless the will provided for them, the omission was intentional and shown in the will, or a valid marital agreement waived the right. For someone in a second marriage who intended to leave most assets to children from a first marriage, this is a quiet catastrophe.
The elective share
Even a new will that intentionally cuts out a spouse doesn’t end the matter. Florida’s elective share statute (sections 732.201–732.2155) entitles a surviving spouse to 30% of the elective estate, which is calculated broadly and reaches well beyond the probate estate—it can include revocable trust assets, certain joint accounts, life insurance, and assets transferred in the year before death. You cannot disinherit a Florida spouse simply by leaving them out. They can elect against the estate and claim their 30%.
Homestead and the surviving spouse
Florida’s constitutional homestead protection adds another layer. If you own a home as homestead and are survived by a spouse, you generally cannot devise that home freely if you also have a minor child, and even without minor children the surviving spouse receives a life estate (or, by election, a one-half tenancy in common). A second-marriage client who wants the house to ultimately pass to children from a prior marriage has to plan around these rules deliberately—often with a marital agreement and a properly structured trust.
Tools that make blended-family planning work
For second marriages and blended families, the goal is usually to provide for the surviving spouse and protect children from a prior relationship. The reliable tools include:
- A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement that waives or shapes elective-share and homestead rights. Without a valid waiver, the statutory rights above will often defeat your intentions.
- A QTIP (qualified terminable interest property) trust that pays income to the surviving spouse for life, then passes the remaining principal to your children—giving the spouse security without giving them the power to redirect the inheritance.
- Beneficiary designations and life insurance aimed at the spouse, so that children’s inheritances aren’t the only assets in play and you can balance competing claims.
- Clear, separate provisions for personal property and the family home, which is where blended-family disputes most often turn bitter.
If you need to move real property into a trust or coordinate a home transfer as part of this, the mechanics matter a great deal. Morgan Legal’s overview of home transfers and retained life estates illustrates how a residence can be handled to balance a surviving spouse’s right to live in the home against the next generation’s eventual ownership—the same tension Florida homestead law forces every blended family to confront.
Updating your estate plan after a move to Florida
Relocating from New York, New Jersey, Ohio, or anywhere else doesn’t void your existing plan, but it does change the law that governs it. Several Florida-specific rules catch newcomers off guard.
Execution formalities and out-of-state wills
Florida generally honors a will validly executed under the law of the state where it was signed, with one important exception: Florida does not recognize holographic (handwritten, unwitnessed) wills, even if they were valid where written. Florida also does not recognize nuncupative (oral) wills. If your current will is holographic, it is void here. Just as important, Florida’s self-proving affidavit under section 732.503 lets a will be admitted to probate without tracking down witnesses—an out-of-state will often lacks the Florida-compliant version, which can slow probate considerably.
Homestead is a Florida superpower—and a planning trap
Florida’s homestead protection is among the strongest in the country: unlimited protection from most creditors, a sharply reduced property tax via the homestead exemption and Save Our Homes cap, and strict rules on how the home can pass at death. Newcomers love the creditor and tax benefits and underestimate the devise restrictions. A trust that worked perfectly for your home in another state may run headlong into Florida homestead rules. This needs to be reviewed, not assumed.
No state estate or inheritance tax—but federal still applies
Florida imposes no state estate tax and no state income tax, which is often the whole reason clients moved. That’s a genuine win. It does not, however, remove the federal estate tax for larger estates, and it doesn’t mean your old plan’s tax provisions still make sense. Plans drafted in high-tax states sometimes contain credit-shelter and formula clauses calibrated to a state tax that no longer exists for you—language that can now produce odd or unintended results.
Documents that should be re-papered on Florida forms
- Durable power of attorney. Florida’s POA statute (Chapter 709) is strict and somewhat unusual—many institutions balk at out-of-state forms, and Florida requires specific signing formalities and enumerated “superpowers.” A Florida-compliant POA prevents real-world friction at banks and brokerages.
- Health care surrogate designation and living will on Florida statutory forms, so local hospitals honor them without hesitation.
- Declaration of domicile. Recording a declaration in your county helps cement Florida residency for tax and homestead purposes—important if a former high-tax state might argue you never truly left.
- Revocable living trust review to confirm it still funds correctly and that real property and homestead are titled properly under Florida law.
For a plain-English refresher on the foundational document at the center of all this, this explainer on the last will and testament is a useful primer—just remember that execution rules differ from state to state, and Florida’s are what now control your plan.
The beneficiary designations almost everyone forgets
Wills and trusts get the attention, but a large share of American wealth passes outside of them, by beneficiary designation. These forms override your will. After any of the three life changes above, audit every one:
- Life insurance policies (individual and employer group)
- IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and pensions
- Annuities
- Payable-on-death (POD) bank accounts and transfer-on-death (TOD) brokerage accounts
- 529 college savings accounts and HSAs
I’ve seen an ex-spouse collect a $500,000 policy a decade after the divorce because no one ever changed the form—and because it was an ERISA plan, the Florida revocation statute couldn’t help. Thirty minutes with these documents is the highest-leverage hour in all of estate planning.
A practical sequence for getting current
- Gather your existing documents—will, trust, POAs, health care directives, and the latest statements for every financial account.
- List every fiduciary and beneficiary named anywhere, and flag any ex-spouse, deceased person, or someone no longer appropriate.
- Map your current family—new spouse, stepchildren, children from prior relationships—and decide who you actually want to provide for and in what proportion.
- Sit down with a Florida estate planning attorney to align documents with Florida statutes (homestead, elective share, pretermitted spouse, POA formalities).
- Execute new documents and update every beneficiary form, then store originals safely and tell your fiduciaries where they are.
If you’d like to see how a Florida-focused practice structures this work, you can review Morgan Legal’s Florida estate planning services. And if you’re ready to talk through your own blended-family or relocation situation, our team is here in Palm Beach—start with our contact page, or learn more about how we handle wills and Florida probate.
The bottom line for blended families and second marriages
An estate plan is not a “set it and forget it” document, and that’s doubly true when your family has been rebuilt through divorce and remarriage or you’ve planted new roots in Florida. The default statutes catch some mistakes, but they were never designed to handle the careful balancing act a blended family requires—providing for a current spouse while protecting children from a prior marriage, all under Florida’s distinctive homestead and elective-share rules. The good news is that every one of these situations is solvable with intentional, current documents. The only fatal move is doing nothing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does getting divorced in Florida automatically remove my ex-spouse from my will?
Largely, yes. Florida Statute 732.507(2) treats your ex-spouse as having predeceased you, voiding gifts and fiduciary appointments to them in your will, and sections 732.703 and 736.1105 revoke many beneficiary designations and trust provisions. But the default has gaps: it does not reach powers of attorney, health care surrogate designations, or ERISA-governed retirement plans like 401(k)s, where federal law makes the plan pay whoever is named on the form. The safe move is to sign new documents and update every beneficiary form rather than rely on the statute.
Can I disinherit my new spouse in Florida by leaving them out of my will?
No. Florida’s elective share statute entitles a surviving spouse to 30% of the elective estate, which is calculated broadly and includes assets beyond probate, such as revocable trust property, certain joint accounts, and life insurance. A spouse can elect against the estate and claim that share regardless of what your will says. The only reliable way to alter these rights is a valid prenuptial or postnuptial agreement that waives them.
Is my out-of-state will still valid after I move to Florida?
Usually, if it was validly executed where you signed it—with one major exception: Florida does not recognize holographic (handwritten, unwitnessed) or oral wills, so those are void here even if valid elsewhere. Your out-of-state will may also lack a Florida-compliant self-proving affidavit, which can slow probate. After relocating, you should have your will, power of attorney, and health care documents reviewed and re-papered on Florida forms.
What is the biggest estate planning mistake blended families make in Florida?
Failing to plan around homestead and elective-share rules. Many people in second marriages want to provide for their current spouse while leaving the home and most assets to children from a prior marriage, but Florida’s constitutional homestead protections and the 30% elective share can defeat that intention. Tools like a QTIP trust combined with a marital agreement let you provide for a spouse for life while protecting your children’s eventual inheritance.
Do I need to update beneficiary designations separately from my will?
Yes, and it is one of the most important steps. Beneficiary designations on life insurance, IRAs, 401(k)s, annuities, and payable-on-death or transfer-on-death accounts pass outside your will and override it. After a divorce, marriage, or move, audit every one of these forms. ERISA retirement plans in particular pay whoever is named on the form, so an outdated designation can send a large asset to an ex-spouse no matter what your will or Florida law says.
For more on our Florida practice, see our overview of estate planning in Boca Raton. Morgan Legal Group's affiliated New York office also handles how a will is contested in New York.