Updating your estate plan after a divorce, marriage, or a move to Florida means revisiting your will, trust, beneficiary designations, and powers of attorney so they reflect your current family, your current state’s laws, and your current property—especially your homestead. A major life event can quietly invalidate provisions you assumed were locked in, or worse, leave assets to an ex-spouse. The safest approach is to treat any of these three events as a trigger to review—and usually rewrite—your core documents under Florida law.
I’ve sat across the desk from plenty of new Florida residents who were certain their out-of-state will would “just carry over.” Sometimes it does. Often it doesn’t behave the way they expect once you factor in Florida’s homestead protections, spousal rights, and the way our courts read documents drafted under another state’s rules. The same is true after a divorce or a remarriage. The plan you built for the family you had may not fit the family you have now.
Why Life Events Break an Estate Plan
An estate plan is a snapshot of your wishes, your relationships, and your assets at one moment in time. Divorce, marriage, and relocation each change at least one of those variables—frequently all three at once. When the snapshot stops matching reality, gaps open up.
Three things tend to go wrong when people skip the review:
- An ex-spouse stays named on a life insurance policy, retirement account, or as a trustee, because beneficiary forms don’t update themselves.
- A new spouse has no protection—or, conversely, inadvertently inherits everything ahead of children from a prior marriage.
- Out-of-state documents collide with Florida’s homestead and spousal-rights rules, producing results no one intended.
None of these failures announce themselves while you’re alive. They surface in probate, when it’s too late to fix them.
Updating Your Estate Plan After Divorce in Florida
Florida law gives you a partial safety net here, but you should never rely on it as your whole plan. Under Florida Statutes § 732.507(2), a divorce or annulment automatically voids any provision in your will that benefits your former spouse—the will is read as if the ex predeceased you. A parallel rule, § 736.1105, applies to revocable trusts.
That sounds tidy. The problem is everything those statutes don’t reach.
What the automatic revocation does not cover
The statutory revocation generally does not touch non-probate assets that pass by contract or designation. That means you still need to manually update:
- Life insurance beneficiaries.
- Retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs (note: ERISA-governed plans follow federal rules, and the named beneficiary on file usually controls regardless of state law).
- Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts.
- Jointly titled real estate, which may still pass to a former co-owner depending on how title is held.
- Powers of attorney and health care surrogate designations—you almost certainly don’t want an ex making medical or financial decisions for you.
I’ve seen a divorced client’s $400,000 life insurance policy pay out to an ex-spouse years after the marriage ended, simply because no one changed the form. The statute didn’t help, because the statute doesn’t govern insurance contracts. The fix took ten minutes; the consequences were permanent.
One more wrinkle: if you and your former spouse held real estate as tenants by the entireties—a form of ownership available only to married couples in Florida—that tenancy converts to a tenancy in common upon divorce. How your homestead is titled after a split deserves a direct look, not an assumption.
Updating Your Estate Plan After Marriage or Remarriage
Marriage creates rights for your new spouse the moment the ceremony ends, whether your documents acknowledge it or not. Florida protects surviving spouses aggressively, and those protections can override an outdated will or trust.
The pretermitted spouse and elective share
If you marry after signing your will and don’t update it, your new spouse may qualify as a pretermitted spouse under Florida Statutes § 732.301 and claim an intestate share—essentially the share they’d receive if you had no will at all—unless the will provided for them or the omission was clearly intentional.
Beyond that, Florida’s elective share statute (§ 732.201 and following) entitles a surviving spouse to 30% of the elective estate. The elective estate is broad: it reaches well beyond probate assets to capture certain trusts, jointly held property, and other transfers. You cannot fully disinherit a Florida spouse by accident or by clever titling alone.
Blended families need deliberate structure
Remarriage with children from a prior relationship is where I see the most heartbreak. Leave everything outright to a new spouse, and there is no legal guarantee your kids ever see a dollar. The common, durable solution is a trust—often a QTIP (qualified terminable interest property) trust—that supports your surviving spouse for life while preserving the remainder for your children. If you want one document to anchor those wishes, the last will and testament is your starting point, but for blended families a will alone rarely does the job.
A clear-eyed prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can also waive elective-share and homestead rights, but only if it’s properly executed with full financial disclosure. These are coordination tools, not afterthoughts—your marital agreement and your estate plan should be drafted to speak with one voice.
Updating Your Estate Plan After Moving to Florida
This is the one most people underestimate. A valid out-of-state will is generally honored in Florida if it was validly executed where you signed it. But “honored” doesn’t mean “optimal,” and several Florida-specific rules can ambush an imported plan.
Homestead is the big one
Florida’s homestead protection is written into our state constitution (Article X, Section 4) and it does three distinct things: it shields your primary residence from most creditors, it caps how the property is assessed for taxes through the Save Our Homes benefit, and—critically for estate planning—it restricts how you can devise the home if you’re survived by a spouse or minor child.
Under the homestead devise restrictions, you cannot simply leave your homestead to anyone you choose if you have a surviving spouse or minor child. Get the titling or trust language wrong and the property may pass by a constitutional formula rather than by your will. Owners focused on real estate—our readers especially—should treat the homestead as the centerpiece of any post-move review. For a sense of how sophisticated home-transfer planning works in a comparable high-stakes market, our colleagues’ overview of home transfers and retained life estates illustrates the kind of strategy that, with Florida-specific drafting, can protect a residence across generations.
Out-of-state documents that need a second look
- Wills with self-proving affidavits: Florida recognizes self-proving wills under § 732.503, but the affidavit’s wording and witnessing must satisfy Florida form to avoid extra steps in probate.
- Holographic and oral wills: Florida does not recognize handwritten unwitnessed (holographic) or nuncupative (oral) wills, even if your prior state did. § 732.502(2) requires two witnesses and proper execution.
- Powers of attorney: Florida’s POA rules (Chapter 709) are strict—powers must be expressly enumerated, and “springing” POAs signed after October 1, 2011 are generally not valid here. A POA from another state may be honored, but banks and title companies often balk, so a fresh Florida-compliant POA is usually worth it.
- Health care directives: Update your living will and health care surrogate to Florida statutory form under Chapter 765 so providers act without hesitation.
- Trust funding and real estate titling: If your trust still holds—or should hold—property in your former state, coordinate the Florida homestead and any out-of-state parcels carefully.
Establishing Florida residency also carries tax upside worth capturing on paper. Florida has no state income tax and no state estate or inheritance tax, which is part of why so many people relocate here in the first place. Filing a Declaration of Domicile and applying for the homestead exemption help cement your Florida residency and the protections that come with it.
A Practical Review Checklist
Whether your trigger was a divorce decree, a marriage license, or a moving truck, walk through the same core list:
- Reread your will and any trusts—do the named people and shares still reflect your wishes?
- Pull every beneficiary designation (life insurance, IRA, 401(k), annuities, POD/TOD accounts) and confirm them in writing.
- Confirm how your homestead and other real estate are titled, and whether tenancy by the entireties, life estates, or a trust fit your goals.
- Replace outdated powers of attorney and health care directives with Florida-compliant versions.
- Name—and back up—your personal representative, trustee, and guardians for minor children.
- For blended families, decide between outright gifts and trust-based protection with eyes open.
If you’d like the deeper mechanics of the foundational documents, see our pages on wills and Florida probate, and our Florida team’s estate planning practice overview.
Don’t Wait for the Next Life Event
The cleanest estate plans I see belong to people who treat review as routine rather than reactive. A divorce, a wedding, and a move are obvious triggers—but so is buying a new home, welcoming a grandchild, or simply letting five years pass. None of these documents are “set and forget,” and Florida’s homestead and spousal rules are unforgiving toward plans that drift out of date.
If any of these three events describes your last few years, that’s your signal. Have a Florida attorney review what you have, fix what’s stale, and make sure your homestead and your family are protected the way you intend. When you’re ready, reach out and we’ll walk through it together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does divorce automatically remove my ex-spouse from my Florida will?
Yes—Florida Statutes § 732.507(2) voids will provisions favoring a former spouse after divorce or annulment, and § 736.1105 does the same for revocable trusts. But this does not cover life insurance, retirement accounts, POD/TOD accounts, or powers of attorney. You must update those designations manually, or an ex-spouse can still inherit.
Is my out-of-state will valid after I move to Florida?
Generally yes, if it was validly executed in the state where you signed it. However, Florida does not recognize handwritten unwitnessed (holographic) or oral wills, and its homestead, self-proving affidavit, and power-of-attorney rules differ from other states. A Florida review is strongly recommended so your documents work smoothly in probate here.
Can I disinherit my spouse in Florida if we just got married?
Not easily. A spouse you marry after signing your will may claim a pretermitted spouse’s share under § 732.301, and Florida’s elective share (§ 732.201+) entitles a surviving spouse to 30% of the broadly defined elective estate. Only a properly executed prenuptial or postnuptial agreement with full disclosure can waive these rights.
Why does Florida homestead matter so much in estate planning?
Florida’s constitutional homestead protection shields your primary residence from most creditors, caps tax assessments via Save Our Homes, and restricts how you can leave the home if you have a surviving spouse or minor child. Incorrect titling or trust language can cause the property to pass by constitutional formula instead of by your will.
How often should I update my Florida estate plan?
Review it after any major life event—divorce, marriage, a move to Florida, a new child or grandchild, or buying a new home—and otherwise at least every three to five years. Florida’s spousal and homestead rules are strict, so plans that drift out of date often produce results the owner never intended.
