We recommend that you review your estate plan every year to ensure it accurately reflects your wishes and your current circumstances. In reviewing your estate plan in 2022, ask yourself the following questions to determine whether your plan needs to be reviewed and updated:

1. Has your health, finances, family situation, or your inheritance wishes, changed significantly from the time that your estate documents were last signed?

2. Has your opinion changed about who should be in charge of your financial affairs since the time that you signed your estate documents? For example, who will be charge of your financial affairs if you became so ill that you could not manage them on your own? Who did you name as your successor trustee and as your attorney-in-fact under your durable general power of attorney? Do you have alternates named in case the primary person in charge could not act?

3. Has your opinion changed about who should be your health care advocate since the time that you signed your Advance Health Care Directive? Under your existing Advance Health Care Directive, who will be your health care advocate if you became unable to give informed consent to medical decisions? Who did you name as alternates? Did your document accurately state your wishes about “heroic measures,” home health care, organ donation, burial or cremation, and who will be in charge of your memorial service, funeral, or other ceremony? Does your document have powers dealing with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease? Does your document state your preference for home health care versus nursing home care?

4. Are your assets titled correctly for tax purposes and for avoiding probate? For example, are your “after income tax” assets titled to your living trust? Do you have assets titled in joint tenancy that really should be held in your living trust?

5. Have you reviewed the primary and secondary beneficiary designations of your IRAs, SEP/IRAs, 401(k), 403(b), pension plans, and other income tax deferred assets since the SECURE Act was passed in 2020? Do the beneficiary designations correctly state who is to inherit those “pre-income tax” assets?

6. Under your existing living trust and will, who will inherit your estate? How, when, and what will your beneficiaries inherit? Have your inheritance wishes changed since the time that you signed your living trust and will? Has the size of your estate changed drastically since you signed your documents?

7. Have the life circumstances of your beneficiaries changed dramatically from the time that you last signed your estate documents? Have you changed your opinion as to what is best for your beneficiaries? For example, since the date that you signed your living trust and will:

• Has a beneficiary’s financial responsibility or trustworthiness changed?
• Has a beneficiary’s health become a concern to you?
• Is a beneficiary now on Medi-Cal or other important government benefits that could be jeopardized by receiving an inheritance outright?
• Does a beneficiary now have substance abuse that warrants a “tough love trust” or other “control” provisions in your estate plan?
• Is a beneficiary’s marriage now of concern to you? If so, do you wish to protect the separate property character of her/his inheritance?
• Have hostilities or conflicts developed involving a beneficiary that warrant changes to your trust and will?
• If you have minor children, is your designated guardian for them still correct?

8. What is your plan for payment of your future home health care or long-term care, if needed? If you want your estate to have the option to have California pay for your skilled nursing care under the Medi-Cal program, then your durable general power of attorney should be reviewed and updated if it does not include so-called “Medi-Cal planning power” in it. Should there be changes to your assets to make yourself more “self-insured” for home health care or long-term care? Should you consider long-term care and home health care insurance or changes in your investment goals to yield more cash flow?

9. Do the recent dramatic changes to the parent-child exclusion for property taxes under Prop 19 necessitate any changes to gifts of real property in your living trust or will?

10. Have the estate tax portions of your trust and estate plan been reviewed within the last five years? Given the enormous changes in the estate tax laws that took effect under the Trump Administration, all living trust plans (particularly for married couples) should be reviewed to conform to the current federal estate tax laws.

If any of these apply to your situation, review your estate documents to make sure that they still accurately reflect your wishes.

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