How Often Should You Update Your Louisiana Estate Plan?
Author: David F. Gremillion, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation)
The Short Answer: Review Every Three to Five Years
Even when nothing dramatic has happened, it is wise to review your Louisiana estate plan every three to five years.
Your family may be the same, but your circumstances may not be. Your children get older. Your assets grow or change. You may purchase property, start a business, receive an inheritance, change insurance coverage, or open new retirement accounts. The people you selected years ago to make decisions or administer your estate may no longer be the best fit.
A periodic review can help confirm that:
Your will or trust still reflects your wishes.
Your executor, trustee, agent, and other fiduciaries are still appropriate.
Your beneficiary designations are current.
Your powers of attorney still address possible incapacity.
Your estate plan coordinates with your business interests, real estate, insurance, and retirement accounts.
Your plan remains appropriate under Louisiana law.
A review does not always mean you need new documents. Sometimes the best answer is to leave your plan exactly as it is. The goal is to know that your documents still work when your family needs them.
Major Events That Should Trigger a Review
You should not wait three to five years if a significant event occurs. These are some of the most common reasons Louisiana families update their estate plans.
Marriage or Divorce
Marriage often changes how people want property distributed, who should make decisions during incapacity, and how they want to provide for a spouse, children, or a blended family.
Divorce should prompt an immediate review of your will, trust, powers of attorney, life-insurance policies, retirement accounts, payable-on-death accounts, and other beneficiary designations. Louisiana law generally revokes certain testamentary gifts or appointments in favor of a former spouse after divorce unless a testament says otherwise. However, different rules can apply to nonprobate assets, contracts, account agreements, and federally regulated retirement plans.
The practical approach is not to assume a divorce automatically fixes everything. Review every relevant document and designation.
Birth or Adoption of a Child
A new child often changes both your planning goals and your legal considerations. You may need to update inheritance provisions, nominate guardians, select a trustee, and decide how assets should be managed while a child is still young.
If you have children, your plan should also address practical questions: Who would care for them? Who would manage inherited assets? At what age should they receive those assets?
Grandchildren can also warrant a review, particularly when your plan includes gifts to descendants, education provisions, special-needs planning, or provisions for a child who dies before you.
Death, Incapacity, or Changed Relationships
Review your estate plan when a beneficiary, executor, trustee, agent under a power of attorney, guardian, or business successor dies, becomes incapacitated, moves away, or is no longer someone you want in that role.
An estate plan depends on people as much as property. A document can be legally valid but still be impractical if it names someone who cannot, should not, or does not want to serve.
New Property, Business Interests, or Significant Assets
A plan created when you owned a home and a few accounts may not adequately address your current circumstances if you later acquire:
A business, professional practice, LLC interest, or partnership interest.
Rental property or multiple real-estate holdings.
A substantial inheritance.
Meaningful retirement or investment accounts.
New life-insurance coverage.
Property that requires family succession or asset-protection planning.
For business owners, estate planning should coordinate with operating agreements, buy-sell provisions, succession plans, ownership records, and any transfer restrictions affecting the business.
Moving Into or Out of Louisiana
If you move to Louisiana, have your estate plan reviewed. A will or trust prepared in another state may still be valid, but it may not be the best plan for a Louisiana resident.
Louisiana has a civil-law succession system and rules that differ from many other states. A review can identify issues involving forced heirship, community property, succession procedures, property ownership, and the formal requirements for estate-planning documents.
Why Louisiana Forced Heirship Matters
Louisiana estate planning is different in part because of forced heirship.
Under Louisiana Civil Code article 1493, forced heirs generally include first-degree descendants who are age 23 or younger when the parent dies, as well as first-degree descendants of any age who are permanently incapable of caring for themselves or administering their estates because of mental incapacity or physical infirmity. Certain representation rules may also apply in limited circumstances.
Forced heirship can affect the portion of an estate that must be reserved for qualifying heirs. That means changes involving minor children, adult children with qualifying disabilities, dependency, and family structure may directly affect how a Louisiana estate plan should be drafted or updated.
This is one reason generic online forms and out-of-state documents can create problems. They may not account for the specific succession rules that apply to Louisiana families.
Review Beneficiary Designations Too
A well-drafted will does not control every asset.
Life-insurance policies, retirement accounts, annuities, payable-on-death accounts, transfer-on-death accounts, and some investment accounts may pass according to their beneficiary designations rather than under your will.
For example, your will may state that your children should inherit equally. But if an old IRA or life-insurance policy still identifies a former spouse or another unintended person as beneficiary, that account may pass in a way that does not match your overall estate plan.
During an estate-plan review, it is important to examine both primary and contingent beneficiary designations. This is especially important after a marriage, divorce, death, birth, inheritance, or major financial change.
What Happens During an Estate Plan Review?
An estate-plan review is a practical conversation about whether your documents still fit your life, assets, and family.
As a Louisiana estate-planning attorney, I typically look at the documents themselves as well as the larger picture, including:
Wills and trusts.
Powers of attorney and health-care documents.
Beneficiary designations.
Real-estate ownership and title.
Business interests and governing agreements.
Retirement accounts and life insurance.
Family changes and fiduciary selections.
Louisiana succession and forced-heirship considerations.
The purpose is not to create unnecessary work. It is to identify outdated provisions, missing documents, beneficiary conflicts, and planning opportunities before they become a problem for your family.
Schedule a Louisiana Estate Plan Review
If you have not reviewed your estate plan in several years, this is a good time to do so. A review can help confirm that your will, trust, powers of attorney, and beneficiary designations still reflect your wishes.
I help individuals, families, business owners, and professionals in Mandeville, Covington, Slidell, the Northshore, and throughout Louisiana evaluate and update estate plans.
Schedule an estate-plan review in person or a video consultation today with Jeffords, Anthony, Little & Gremillion, PLLC!
This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Estate-planning recommendations depend on your specific facts, documents, assets, and family circumstances.
