The Replanning Calendar
Every event in this chapter is also an estate-planning event, and most of them carry a deadline or a one-way door. The generic advice to “review your documents every few years” is not wrong, but it is not what costs people money — what costs people money is missing a window that closes. Table 22.1 is the whole chapter compressed into the actions each trigger demands and the clock attached to each.
| Trigger | What to do, and by when |
| Engagement | Exchange financial disclosure; prenup in final form at least seven days before signing, with independent counsel each (section “Prenuptial and Postnuptial Agreements”). A prenup cannot waive ERISA survivor rights — that consent is only valid after the wedding. |
| Marriage | Thirty days: benefits enrollment, new W-4s, beneficiary designations, name change at SSA. Ninety days: wills, revocable trust, durable power of attorney, advance healthcare directive, titling decisions, umbrella policy (section “Administrative Triage”). Post-wedding spousal consent form on every employer plan. |
| Birth or adoption | Guardian nomination and a standby authorization; term life sized to raise the child; 529; trust provisions for minors. Until you act, the omitted-child statute writes the result (section “Titling and Beneficiary Designations”). |
| Inheritance or gift received | Segregate it the day it arrives, in an account titled to you alone. Commingling is reversible only on paper and only with tracing (section “Separate Property, Community Property, and Commingling”). A postnup is the moment’s other instrument. |
| Liquidity event or large grant | Estate-freeze structures work while the asset is small — SLAT, GRAT, sale to an IDGT (section “Estate planning”). Fund a SLAT only while the marriage is sound; a SLAT and a divorce are a bad combination (section “Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs)”). |
| Move between states | Re-examine the property regime, quasi-community property, trust situs, and state estate tax — the last of which can appear at $1M–$7M thresholds (section “Separate Property, Community Property, and Commingling”, section “Bypass Trusts”). |
| Non-citizen spouse | IRC §6013(g) residency election; FBAR and Form 8938; the $194,000 (2026) annual gift cap; QDOT drafting for bequests (section “Titling and Beneficiary Designations”, section “Marital Trusts: The QTIP and the A/B/C Structure”). |
| Separation contemplated | Fix and document the date of separation (section “The Date That Decides Everything”). Copy the financial file, and clean up beneficiary designations before filing — the automatic restraining orders freeze changes afterward (section “Administrative Triage”). |
| Divorce filed | Revoke powers of attorney and healthcare proxies; separate credit and banking; arrange COBRA or marketplace coverage; pre-approve the QDRO with the plan (section “Splitting Retirement Accounts”). |
| Divorce final | Rewrite everything: will, trust, powers, directives, and every beneficiary form — the elective share and the ERISA consent that protected your spouse are both gone, and any form you fail to change still names them (section “Titling and Beneficiary Designations”). Allocate the tax attributes (section “Dividing the Tax Attributes”) and recompute the estimated-tax safe harbor. |
| Remarriage | Blended-family structures — QTIP, bypass trust, an ILIT for the children of the first marriage (section “Marital Trusts: The QTIP and the A/B/C Structure”). Your new spouse acquires an elective share and ERISA survivor rights on the wedding day; a postnup is how you shape them. |
| Death of a spouse | Nine months: qualified disclaimers, and Form 706 to elect portability — with a five-year rescue if missed (section “Post-Mortem Planning: The Levers You Pull After Death”). File Form SSA-44 to reset IRMAA. The year of death is the last joint return and the cheapest year to realize gains or convert to Roth before the brackets compress (section “The Widow’s Penalty”). |
Marriage and divorce reward the same unglamorous habit: writing the terms down before emotion makes writing them down impossible. The survivorship case — where the paperwork must outlive one of the partners — is the subject of section “Estate planning”.