An estate plan reflects the family you had, the property you owned, and the law that applied on the day you signed it. None of those three things stay fixed. I regularly meet with clients who signed a will ten or fifteen years ago and understood the matter to be permanently settled, and in many cases the document still does exactly what it was written to do. In others, the plan no longer matches the life it was drafted for, and the people who discover that gap are the ones left behind, when nothing can be corrected. A review every three to five years, and after any significant life event, is generally enough to keep a plan aligned with reality.
Your family does not stay the same
Marriages, divorces, births, deaths, and remarriages all change who should inherit and who should be protected. New York provides some automatic protection here. Under EPTL 5-1.4, a divorce revokes any disposition or fiduciary appointment in your will in favor of your former spouse, so an ex-spouse does not inherit simply because the document was never updated. That statute is a safety net rather than a plan. It does not address a former spouse's relatives who remain named as beneficiaries, it does not account for a new spouse who holds a right of election against your estate under EPTL 5-1.1-A. Guardianship clauses raise the same issue in reverse. A provision naming a certain guardian for a two-year-old may be inappropriate by the time the minor is twelve.
The people you appointed may no longer be the right choices
Every plan names people: an executor, a trustee, an agent under a power of attorney, and a health care agent. Those people age, relocate, lose touch, or die before you do. Eligibility can shift as well. A person who is not a United States citizen and does not live in New York generally cannot serve as an executor here unless a New York resident serves alongside them, which can quietly disqualify a sibling who moved abroad years ago. That is why I advise clients to name at least one successor for every role in the plan, and to use the review to confirm that their primary choices are still able and willing to serve. I've seen people name their siblings to be the executors and trustees for their minor children, only to pass away with children who in their 60s and their siblings well into their 80s still named as executors.
What you own has changed
Most plans are drafted around the assets a person held at the time. Since then you may have bought a home, sold a business, inherited money, or purchased property in Florida or New Jersey, which can require a separate ancillary proceeding in that state before it passes to your family. Retirement accounts that were modest when the will was signed are often the largest asset in the estate a decade later. I also see trusts that were properly drafted and executed but never funded, meaning the deed and accounts were never retitled into the trust's name. An unfunded trust does not avoid probate; it simply sits in a drawer while the assets it was meant to hold pass under the will instead. A periodic review would allow you to properly fund the trust and avoid probate in every jurisdiction.
New York law and the tax thresholds move
The New York estate tax exclusion is adjusted every year, and the state taxes estates far more aggressively than the federal government does. For deaths in 2026, the New York exclusion is $7,350,000, while the federal exemption sits at $15,000,000 per person. New York also applies what practitioners call the cliff: an estate exceeding the exclusion by more than five percent loses the benefit of the exclusion entirely and is taxed on its full value, not merely on the excess. New York does not allow portability between spouses either, so a couple who leaves everything outright to each other can waste one exclusion completely. The Department of Taxation and Finance publishes the basic exclusion amount for each year of death, and it is worth checking that figure against your net worth periodically, since a home that has appreciated substantially can move a family over the threshold. Gifts made within three years of death are added back into the calculation as well, which is a reason to plan earlier rather than later.
Assets that pass outside the will
A will controls only what passes through the estate. Life insurance, retirement accounts, in-trust-for accounts, and jointly held property pass by designation or by operation of law, and as we discussed in a prior article on beneficiary designations, those forms override whatever your will says. Beneficiary forms are also the part of a plan most likely to be out of date, because they were completed at a job you left years ago. A review should include pulling each designation and confirming that a primary and a contingent beneficiary are actually on file.
A review is usually a short appointment. In many cases nothing needs to change, and the client leaves with confirmation that the plan still works.
If you have a New York estate plan which has not been reviewed in several years, contact us today at (347) 766-2685 for a free phone consultation.
Contributed by Roman Aminov, Esq, a Queens estate attorney in New York City.
