When I started out as an estate planning attorney nearly 15 years ago, estate planning was viewed as a one time transaction - first you met with the clients, then you drafted their plan, then you reviewed the plan with them, then they signed it, and finally you sent the clients on their way with their perfect plan at that particular point in their lives. The clients then proceeded to stick their estate plan in a drawer and forgot about it until it was needed. Today, that view has significantly changed.
Life and Law Changes
Not only have state and federal tax and estate planning laws changed dramatically over the past 14 years, but so has your life. You may have married, or divorced and remarried; had a loved one die; inherited money from a family member or friend; bought or sold a business; retired; had or adopted children; bought a second home or moved to a new state; or - here's my favorite - won the lottery. All of these life and legal changes will have direct implications for your estate plan, and so you need to stay on top of it or it won't work when it's needed the most. Aside from this, I'll bet there's a lot of you who have unfunded or only partially Revocable Living Trusts.
Today people are looking for more practical and common sense estate planning. With this in mind, you should really view estate planning as a lifelong process, as if your life depends on it, one that you need to work at and tend to day in and day out as your life and the laws change. Hopefully your estate planning attorney shares this view and helps to keep you and your plan on track with a formal maintenance and updating program. If not, you should consider finding an attorney who does.
