Planning your Estate in a Mobile Society
Creating your Estate Plan is the first step in ensuring that your loved ones are protected once you pass away. Equally as important as creating your estate plan is maintaining it. There is a moment during most signing ceremonies where the client will physically relax and sometimes even say “wow! I am so glad we finally got this done.” While the chunk of your planning might be done, there are always reasons to update your plan in the future. Some of those reasons include: a change in family status (married, divorced, adding a child), a change in your estate, a change in the law, and one that most do not think about, a change in the state in which you live.
While most estate plans will “work” in a different state than which they were created, they may not work as well as they would if they were created and reviewed by an attorney in the state that you have moved to. Each state has a different set of laws and regulations that might affect the way your estate plan is written, executed, and how well it works in an emergency. For example, if you are in the hospital and have an out of state Advance Health Care Directive (medical power of attorney), the hospital will likely accept it, but it may take time for their legal department to review the document and determine its validity- time which you might not have. This is also true in a financial institution setting, a financial power of attorney is sometimes only as good as the person who is accepting it. If the point of creating an estate plan is to make your incapacity and passing as easy as possible on banks, hospitals, your agents, and your loved ones, then it is best practice to revisit your plan when you move out of state.
If you have recently moved to California, or you have Estate Planning documents from out of state and you now reside in California, we would be happy to review your plan and make suggestions of how you should update it. Contact us today.