Your Will After Divorce
The Estate Planning Update That Cannot Wait
By The Bold & The Wise Editorial Team
Wednesday, June 10, 2026 · 10 min read
Categories: Legal, Money & Family, Wednesday
Part two of The Divorce Reset — a four-week practical guide to rebuilding your financial life after divorce.
Editor’s note: This article is the second in a four-part series for adults over 55 who are navigating, or have recently completed, a divorce. The guidance is general and is not a substitute for advice from your own estate planning attorney, accountant, or financial advisor; readers should verify any specific recommendation with professionals who know their full situation. Estate planning law varies by state.
There is a single sentence about post-divorce estate planning that, if you understand it and act on it, will save your family more grief than almost anything else this series will tell you:
Your existing estate plan still treats your former spouse as the central beneficiary of your life — and it will continue to do so until you actively change it.
The divorce decree does not change your will. It does not change your beneficiary designations. It does not change your powers of attorney. It does not change your healthcare directive. Every one of those documents continues to operate exactly as it was written before the divorce, naming your former spouse as the person who inherits your assets, makes your medical decisions when you cannot, and is granted authority over your finances.
If you died tomorrow, in many states, significant portions of your estate would still pass to your former spouse. If you were hospitalized tomorrow, your former spouse might still hold the legal authority to make medical decisions for you.
This is the work this article addresses. It is the most urgent work in the first ninety days after divorce, and it is the work most divorcing adults postpone until something forces them to do it — by which point, in some cases, it is too late.
Last week’s article on banking covered the financial accounts and transactions of the first ninety days. This week is the legal and estate planning update. The two pieces work together. Neither one is complete without the other.
The Two-Part Problem
The estate planning update after divorce has two components, and the order matters because the second component is more powerful than the first.
The first component is the will itself. This is the document that allocates your assets at death — who inherits the house, the savings, the personal property, the family heirlooms.
The second component is your beneficiary designations. These are the forms attached to your IRA, 401(k), life insurance policies, annuities, transfer-on-death accounts, and payable-on-death bank accounts. They specify who receives those assets when you die.
Here is the critical point most people get wrong: beneficiary designations override your will. If your will says one thing and your IRA beneficiary form says another, the IRA beneficiary form wins. The money flows according to the beneficiary form, not according to the will, regardless of what the divorce decree said or what you intended.
This means the most urgent post-divorce estate planning work is not updating the will. It is updating every beneficiary designation in your financial life — because those are the documents that actually control where the money goes.
We will start there.
Beneficiary Designations — The Hidden Risk
Make a list. Write it down. Every account in your financial life that has a beneficiary designation form attached. The list is longer than you think.
Retirement accounts. Your IRA, 401(k), 403(b), pension plan, and any other tax-advantaged retirement account each has a beneficiary form on file. Call your plan administrators (for employer plans) and your IRA custodians (for IRAs). Request the current beneficiary designation forms.
Life insurance policies. Every active life insurance policy you have — term, whole life, universal, group through an employer — has a designated beneficiary. Pull the policies. Verify the named beneficiary.
Annuities. If you own any annuity products, each one has a beneficiary form.
Transfer-on-Death (TOD) accounts. Brokerage accounts often have a TOD provision that names a beneficiary. This bypasses probate entirely and goes directly to the named person.
Payable-on-Death (POD) bank accounts. Checking and savings accounts can have a POD designation. Verify each.
Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts. Yes, even these have beneficiary forms.
Workplace benefits. Group life insurance, accidental death and disability benefits, executive deferred compensation plans, employee stock purchase plans, and any other workplace benefit may have a beneficiary form. Contact your benefits department.
For each account on the list, the question is the same: does the beneficiary form still name your former spouse?
If yes — and it almost certainly does, in many cases — you fill out a new beneficiary designation form, name your new intended beneficiary, sign it, and submit it back to the institution. The change takes effect when the institution acknowledges receipt.
This is tedious. It is not difficult. It can be largely completed in two or three focused afternoons. And it is the single most consequential estate planning task of the first ninety days.
The Tax Trap of Naming Children Directly
A common mistake at this stage is to immediately replace the former spouse on every beneficiary form with your adult children, without thinking through the tax consequences.
For non-retirement accounts — life insurance, bank accounts, brokerage TODs — naming adult children directly as beneficiaries is generally fine. The assets pass to them with little or no tax impact.
For retirement accounts — IRAs, 401(k)s, and similar — naming adult children as direct beneficiaries creates a more complicated tax outcome under current law. Inherited retirement accounts are subject to a ten-year distribution rule that forces the beneficiary to withdraw and pay tax on the full account balance within ten years of inheritance. For adult children who are themselves in their peak earning years, this can produce a meaningful tax burden.
The cleaner solution for retirement accounts is often a trust as beneficiary — specifically, a properly structured trust that receives the inherited retirement assets and distributes them on a tax-efficient timeline. Setting up this kind of trust requires an estate planning attorney with retirement-account experience.
Do not let the complexity stop you from making the immediate change. Naming your adult children directly is dramatically better than leaving your former spouse on the form. Update the forms now. Refine the structure later with a professional.
The Will Itself
Once the beneficiary forms are updated, turn to the will.
Most existing wills after a long marriage include some combination of the following:
- A primary distribution to the spouse (or “to my husband/wife”)
- The spouse named as executor of the estate
- The spouse named as guardian for minor children (if applicable)
- The spouse named as trustee of any trusts created under the will
- Specific bequests to family members on the spouse’s side
- References to jointly owned property that no longer exists
Every one of those provisions needs review. Many will need to be deleted or rewritten.
There are two paths forward, depending on your circumstances and the speed at which you need protection.
The interim will. If you cannot get an appointment with an estate planning attorney for several weeks and you want immediate protection, a simple interim will can be drafted by an attorney in a single appointment, or in some states using carefully chosen online tools. The interim will is not the final document — it is a temporary solution that revokes the prior will and names your intended interim beneficiaries while you work on the comprehensive update. Many estate planning attorneys will draft a simple interim will quickly and inexpensively because they know it allows you breathing room for the full revision.
The full revision. This is the comprehensive update — a new will reflecting your post-divorce intentions, new powers of attorney, an updated healthcare directive, and any trusts that need to be created or modified. The full revision typically takes four to eight weeks of attorney work and costs between $1,500 and $5,000 depending on complexity. It is worth every dollar.
For most readers, doing both is the right path: a quick interim will in the first three weeks to close the immediate exposure, then a comprehensive revision over the following two months to put the permanent structure in place.
Whatever you do, do not put off the will update because the comprehensive revision feels overwhelming. The interim solution exists precisely for this moment.
Powers of Attorney and Healthcare Directives
These two documents are often overlooked in the post-divorce rush and they should not be.
Power of attorney. Most existing powers of attorney name the spouse as the person who can make financial decisions on your behalf if you become incapacitated. This is exactly the wrong outcome after divorce. Update it. Name a trusted family member, a close friend, or a professional fiduciary. The document is short, the attorney work is fast, and the cost is modest.
Healthcare power of attorney and living will. These name the person who will make medical decisions for you if you cannot speak for yourself, and who will follow your stated wishes about end-of-life care. The existing documents almost certainly name your former spouse. Update them immediately. This is, in some ways, the most personally consequential update on the list — being incapacitated and having your former spouse making your medical decisions is a real and avoidable scenario.
Both of these documents can be drafted as part of the will revision (your estate planning attorney handles them as part of the same engagement) or as standalone documents if you are using the interim approach.
Trusts
If your existing estate plan includes any trusts — a revocable living trust, an irrevocable trust, a charitable remainder trust, a special needs trust for a child — every one of them needs review.
Revocable living trusts are the most common and are usually structured so that the spouse is a co-trustee and a primary beneficiary. Both of those provisions need to be addressed. The trust document itself may need to be amended or restated, or the trust may need to be revoked entirely and replaced with a new trust structure.
Irrevocable trusts are more complicated because, by definition, they cannot easily be changed. Consult the attorney who drafted the trust to understand your options.
If you have trusts, this is one of the conversations that absolutely requires an attorney with estate planning expertise. Do not try to handle trust modifications without professional help.
Common Mistakes
A few patterns produce avoidable problems at this stage.
Forgetting the beneficiary forms. The single most common mistake. People update the will, feel done, and never get around to the beneficiary designations. Because the designations override the will, the money still flows to the former spouse. We say this for the third time in this article because it is the most expensive mistake we see.
Updating only some of the beneficiary forms. Your IRA, but not your 401(k) from a previous employer. Your current life insurance, but not the policy from two jobs ago. Make the complete list before you start updating. Catch every account.
Waiting too long for the will revision. A divorced adult who dies without updating the will places their family in a difficult situation — sometimes a legally contested one. The interim will solution exists for the exact case where the comprehensive revision is going to take a while. Use it.
Doing the estate planning update without coordinating with the rest of your professional team. The estate planning attorney needs to know what your accountant is doing about the tax consequences of asset division, what your financial advisor is doing about the new investment plan, and what changes to the household budget will affect long-term wealth transfer planning. The Wednesday May 20 article on coordinating your lawyer and accountant becomes especially important during a divorce.
Trying to do all of this without professional help. Online tools have their place. The post-divorce estate planning update is not their place for most readers. The stakes — and the complexity — justify professional involvement.
A Practical Sequence for the First Ninety Days
Here is the order I would recommend, mapped to weeks:
Week one and two. Pull together the complete list of beneficiary designations across every account in your financial life. Schedule an appointment with an estate planning attorney for an interim will. Update healthcare power of attorney and durable power of attorney while you are at it.
Week three through six. Update every beneficiary designation, one account at a time. Keep a running spreadsheet or notebook showing what was updated, when, and the confirmation reference number from the institution. The records will be useful later.
Week seven through twelve. Comprehensive will revision. Engagement with an estate planning attorney for the full document set — new will, updated powers of attorney, updated healthcare directive, trust restatements if applicable. This work runs in parallel with continued beneficiary updates and ties everything together.
By the end of the ninety days, you have a coherent post-divorce estate plan. Every document reflects your new intentions. Every beneficiary form names the right people. Every fiduciary role has been reassigned. Your family — whoever you are now choosing to protect — is actually protected.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
If you take nothing else from this article, take this: the cost of doing nothing is paid by your family, not by you.
You will not personally suffer the consequences of failing to update your estate plan. Your former spouse will receive the assets they would have received under the unchanged plan. Your adult children will discover the situation during the most painful weeks of their lives, after you are gone, and they will be the ones who absorb the cost — financial, emotional, and relational.
The work described in this article is your final responsibility to the people you actually want to protect now. It is one of the more meaningful acts of love you can perform during this difficult chapter of your life.
You can prevent the future grief by doing the work over the next ninety days.
Next Friday on The Bold & The Wise: Visiting Rome: Food and History — A First-Time Traveler’s Guide to the Eternal City, Built Around the Two Things That Make It Worth the Trip.
Coming in The Divorce Reset:
- Wednesday June 17: Philanthropy After Divorce — Rebuilding Your Charitable Giving Plan
- Wednesday June 24: Planning Family Events After Divorce — Holidays, Birthdays, and the Hard Calendar
Resources for the Estate Planning Update
- A reputable estate planning attorney with experience in post-divorce updates (your state bar association maintains referral directories)
- A simple notebook dedicated to tracking which beneficiary forms have been updated, when, and with which institution
- A secure document storage system — a fireproof home safe, plus a digital backup — for the originals of your new will and supporting documents
- A current edition of a reputable estate planning workbook for self-education between attorney appointments
- A consultation with a Certified Financial Planner for the financial side of the post-divorce transition, working in coordination with your attorney
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