An estate plan is supposed to do something pretty important. Make sure that what you have built ends up in the right hands, in the right way, with as little friction as possible.
The mistake is treating it like a one-time project.
An estate plan is a snapshot. It captures what life looked like the day the documents got signed. The family. The assets. The trustees. The tax law. The state you lived in. All of it frozen in time.
Life does not stay frozen. Kids grow up. Grandkids arrive. Marriages happen. Some end. A business gets sold. A property gets bought. Somebody moves to a different state. The tax code gets rewritten. The trustee who made perfect sense ten years ago is now retired, or no longer the right fit, or no longer with us.
When the plan does not keep up, the family ends up living with decisions made in a world that no longer exists. And those decisions tend to surface at the worst possible time.
A good estate plan is a living document. It gets reviewed on a cadence. It gets updated when life changes. It gets pressure-tested against the current tax code. The signing is not the end of the work. It is the beginning.
Origins Private Wealth and LPL Financial do not provide legal advice or tax services. Please consult your legal advisor or tax advisor regarding your specific situation.