A divorce changes your property, family relationships, and plans for the future. To learn more about how to update a will after a divorce in New York, you can meet with an estate-planning attorney who will review your existing will and divorce documents and help you choose what specific changes to make to align your plans with your post-divorce life. Your attorney can also help you update your entire estate plan, coordinating your will with trusts, beneficiary designations, and documents that authorize others to make financial or medical decisions for you.
The Law Office of Andrew M. Lamkin, P.C., can review your will and help you update it, along with any other estate planning documents that work together with it to form your estate plan. Andrew Lamkin personally handles every matter. He helps New Yorkers create and revise wills, trusts, advance directives, and other estate-planning documents. From his Plainview office, he explains your choices in plain terms, tailors your plan to your family and financial goals, and coordinates with financial and tax advisors when appropriate.
What Happens to Your Will When You Divorce in New York?
When you divorce, New York law generally revokes parts of your will that benefit your former spouse by operation of law, including provisions that:
- Leave money, real estate, or other property to your former spouse;
- Name your former spouse as executor of your estate;
- Appoint your former spouse as trustee of a trust created through your will;
- Give your former spouse authority to decide who receives certain property; and
- Nominate your former spouse to serve as a guardian or in another representative role.
As a result, those portions of your will have no legal effect. If you die after divorcing and your will still leaves property to a spouse or assigns them a role in your estate, your loved ones follow the terms of your will as if your spouse died before you. The rule applies unless the will expressly provides that a provision should continue after divorce, and the change becomes active once you receive a final divorce decree.
Updating your will allows you to align your estate plan with the reality of your life post-divorce.
How Do You Update a Will After Divorce?
To update a will after divorce, begin by consulting a New York estate-planning attorney, who will work with you to review your existing plan, make new decisions, and execute a replacement will. Your attorney guides you through understanding what the divorce changed through coordinating the completed will with the rest of your estate plan.
Meet With a New York Estate-Planning Attorney
To begin, you typically bring your will, divorce judgment or settlement, related estate-planning documents, and current information about your family and property to a meeting with an estate planning attorney. We use those materials to determine:
- Which provisions New York law has revoked,
- Which provisions remain in effect,
- What property you own following the divorce,
- Whether your divorce agreement creates obligations that affect your estate plan, and
- Which documents and beneficiary designations require separate updates.
Our review helps orient you to where you are and what we need to do to get your plan aligned with your life.
Decide What Your New Will Should Say
Next, you and your attorney discuss what you want the new will to accomplish. Property division may have changed the assets you own, while new living arrangements and family relationships may have changed the people you trust to receive property or manage your estate.
Decisions to address include:
- Beneficiaries—the people or organizations that will receive your property;
- Alternate beneficiaries—recipients who can inherit if a first choice dies before you;
- Executor—the person who will manage your estate, pay valid expenses, and distribute property;
- Trustees—who will manage any trusts that your will creates;
- Guardians—if you have minor children, the people you want the court to appoint to care for them;
- Specific gifts—gifts of real estate, money, personal property, or business assets to beneficiaries; and
- Remaining property—who will receive property that the will does not distribute through a specific gift.
Your attorney can explain how these choices interact and turn them into provisions that work together.
Prepare and Sign a Replacement Will
After you make these decisions, your attorney prepares a new will that expresses them clearly. Although an amendment called a codicil can change particular terms, a complete replacement will is often easier to understand and interpret after divorce.
Your attorney ensures you complete the specific steps New York law requires to create a valid will, including that:
- You sign the end of the document,
- You confirm for the two witnesses that the document is your will, and
- Those two witnesses sign the document.
Your attorney supervises the signing, explains each participant’s role, and confirms that your will meets legal requirements.
How Do You Coordinate Your Will With the Rest of Your Estate Plan?
Your will controls certain property, but many assets fall outside a will’s control. Those assets, too, often require updating after a divorce. Your attorney also helps you coordinate your updates to your will with your overall estate plan, including items such as:
- Revocable trusts,
- Powers of attorney,
- Health care proxies,
- Living wills,
- Life insurance beneficiary designations,
- Retirement account beneficiary designations,
- Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts,
- Jointly owned property, and
- Deeds and other real estate documents.
While New York law automatically revokes some provisions benefiting a former spouse in a will, the same rule may not apply to other documents. Your attorney helps you identify what you need to update, then implement those updates to create a coordinated plan.
Update Your Will After a New York Divorce
Updating your will allows you to decide who receives your property and who will carry out your instructions following a divorce. Coordinating that will with your other documents and beneficiary designations creates an estate plan based on your current assets, relationships, and priorities.
The Law Office of Andrew M. Lamkin, P.C. helps clients throughout New York update wills and related estate-planning documents. Andrew Lamkin will personally review your existing plan, explain your options in plain terms, and prepare documents tailored to your family and financial goals. Contact the firm’s Plainview office to discuss how to update a will after divorce.
Andrew Lamkin is principal in the law firm of Andrew M. Lamkin, P.C., where he focuses his practice in the areas of elder law, estate planning and special needs planning, including Wills and Trusts, Medicaid planning, estate administration and residential real estate transactions. He is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey.