When and Why to Review Your Florida Estate Plan: A Physician’s and Professional’s Guide

You should review your Florida estate plan every three to five years and after any major life or financial event — a marriage, divorce, birth, death, business sale, or move to or from the state. A “review” means re-reading your will, revocable trust, powers of attorney, and beneficiary designations to confirm they still name the right people, hold the right assets, and comply with current Florida law. For physicians, business owners, and other high-liability professionals, this isn’t housekeeping; it’s the difference between a plan that protects your estate and one that quietly fails when it matters.

I’ve sat with too many families in Miami-Dade who discovered, only after a death, that the trust was never funded, the ex-spouse was still the life-insurance beneficiary, or the healthcare surrogate had predeceased the patient. None of those were drafting mistakes. They were review mistakes — the plan was fine the day it was signed and never looked at again.

What “reviewing” a Florida estate plan actually means

People hear “estate plan review” and picture a stack of documents being re-signed. In practice, a thorough review is more like a physical exam. We’re checking three different systems and how they talk to each other:

• The documents — your last will and testament, revocable living trust, durable power of attorney, designation of health care surrogate, and living will. Are they current? Do they still reflect your wishes?
• The people — personal representative, successor trustee, agents under your power of attorney, healthcare surrogate, and guardians for minor children. Are they alive, willing, local enough to act, and still the right choice?
• The assets — what you own, how it’s titled, and who is named as beneficiary. Is the trust actually funded? Do your accounts and policies route where the plan intends?

That last point trips up the most successful people. A surgeon with a beautifully drafted trust still leaves a probate mess if the brokerage account, the practice’s buy-sell proceeds, and the rental condo were never retitled into the trust. The document is only as good as the funding behind it.

The life events that should trigger an immediate review

Forget the calendar for a moment. Certain events should send you back to your estate documents within weeks, not years. If any of these have happened since you last looked, treat it as overdue.

Marriage, divorce, or a new partner

Florida law tries to protect a surviving spouse, sometimes in ways you didn’t intend. Under the elective share statute, Florida Statutes §732.201, a surviving spouse is generally entitled to 30% of the elective estate regardless of what the will says. If you remarry without updating your plan, your new spouse may have rights that override the children from your first marriage — or vice versa.

Divorce cuts the other way. Florida Statutes §732.507 voids gifts to a former spouse in your will upon dissolution of marriage, and §736.1105 does the same for revocable trusts. But — and this is the trap — those statutes do not automatically remove an ex-spouse as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy or retirement account governed by a beneficiary designation. Plenty of ex-spouses have collected six-figure death benefits the decedent fully intended to redirect.

A birth, an adoption, or a child reaching adulthood

New children need to be added, guardians named, and trust provisions calibrated to their ages. When a child turns 18, the calculus changes again — and if a child develops special needs, distributing assets outright could disqualify them from means-tested benefits. That’s a moment for a special needs trust, not a quick beneficiary edit.

Death or incapacity of someone named in your plan

Your personal representative, trustee, and agents are the load-bearing walls of the plan. When one of them dies, becomes ill, or simply moves out of state, you need a successor in place who can actually serve. An out-of-state personal representative also raises a Florida qualification issue under §733.304 — non-residents can only serve if they’re closely related to you.

A significant change in wealth, a business sale, or a new venture

For professionals, money tends to arrive in lumps — a practice buyout, an equity event, a malpractice settlement on your side of the table. A plan built when your net worth was $2 million may be structurally wrong at $12 million, especially as you approach federal estate-tax thresholds. New real estate, a new LLC, or a concierge practice each create assets that have to be folded into the plan deliberately.

Moving to or from Florida

If you executed your documents in New York, New Jersey, or Illinois and then moved to North Miami, your will is probably still valid here — but “valid” and “optimal” aren’t the same thing. Florida has no state estate tax and a uniquely strong homestead protection, and our rules on healthcare surrogates and powers of attorney differ from other states. Out-of-state self-proving affidavits don’t always satisfy Florida’s §732.503 requirements, which can slow probate. A relocation deserves a fresh look.

Why physicians and high-liability professionals review more often

If you carry personal liability exposure — physicians, surgeons, dentists, attorneys, financial advisors, real estate developers — your estate plan is doing double duty. It’s distributing your wealth and shielding it. That second job demands more frequent attention.

Florida is genuinely friendly to professionals who want to protect what they’ve built. Your homestead enjoys near-total protection from creditors under the Florida Constitution (Article X, Section 4). Tenancy by the entireties can shield jointly held marital property from the creditors of one spouse. Annuities and life insurance cash value receive statutory protection under Florida Statutes §222.13 and §222.14. But these protections interact with your estate plan in ways that are easy to break.

A common example: a physician retitles the homestead into a revocable trust for probate-avoidance reasons, not realizing it may complicate — though Florida courts have largely preserved — homestead creditor protection and the descent rules under Article X. Or a doctor moves a protected annuity into an account structure that strips the §222.14 shield. These are the kinds of things a periodic review catches before a creditor does.

Asset-protection planning also tends to involve more sophisticated vehicles — irrevocable trusts, domestic asset protection structures, and income-stream tools. If you’ve ever explored a for long-term-care or Medicaid planning, you already know these instruments have moving parts that must be reviewed as your health and income change. The same discipline applies to — powerful, but only when they stay aligned with your current goals and the current Medicaid look-back rules.

How often, on a schedule, even when nothing happens

Absent any triggering event, use this cadence:

1. Every 3 years for most professionals and business owners — enough to catch drift in asset titling and beneficiary forms.
2. Every 1–2 years if you carry significant liability exposure, hold an irrevocable trust, are doing Medicaid or long-term-care planning, or your net worth is approaching the federal estate-tax exemption.
3. Immediately after any of the life events above, and after any major change in federal tax law.

Tax law is its own clock. The federal estate and gift tax exemption is scheduled to change at the end of 2025, and Congress has a habit of revising these figures with little notice. Anyone whose estate is within striking distance of the exemption should review whenever the rules shift — the planning that’s optimal at one exemption level can be wasteful or exposed at another.

A practical Florida estate plan review checklist

When you sit down with your attorney — or before you do — run through this list. It’s the same one I work through with clients in North Miami:

• Does your will or trust still name the right beneficiaries in the right proportions?
• Are your personal representative, successor trustee, and agents alive, willing, and Florida-qualified?
• Is your revocable trust actually funded — are accounts and real estate titled in its name?
• Do your life insurance, IRA, 401(k), and annuity beneficiary designations match your plan (and not an ex-spouse)?
• Is your durable power of attorney compliant with Florida’s 2011 Power of Attorney Act, which eliminated “springing” powers for new documents?
• Is your designation of health care surrogate current, and does your living will reflect your wishes?
• Has your homestead, tenancy-by-entireties, or asset-protection structure been disturbed by any retitling?
• Have you addressed digital assets, business succession, and a buy-sell agreement if you own a practice?

If you can’t answer “yes” with confidence to each, you’re due. For a deeper look at the documents themselves, our overview of Florida wills and trusts walks through what each one does.

What happens if you don’t review — the cost of a stale plan

An out-of-date plan doesn’t announce itself. It sits quietly until a death or an incapacity, and then the gaps surface all at once: assets that pass to the wrong person, a trust that has to be probated anyway because it was never funded, a personal representative who can’t qualify, a healthcare surrogate who can no longer serve. Probate in Miami-Dade is slower and more public than most clients expect, and every defect adds months and cost.

The clients who fare best aren’t the ones with the most elaborate documents. They’re the ones who treat the plan as a living thing and check it on a schedule. That’s especially true for professionals whose wealth, liability, and family circumstances all move faster than the average household’s.

Talk to a Florida estate planning attorney

If it’s been more than three years, or if any life event on this page describes you, schedule a review. Our firm regularly helps physicians and professionals across North Miami and greater Miami-Dade align their plans with current law and current life. You can learn more about our or reach out to our office to set up a confidential consultation. A focused afternoon now can spare your family years of avoidable difficulty later.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I review my Florida estate plan?

Most professionals should review every three years, and high-liability individuals such as physicians or anyone doing Medicaid or asset-protection planning should review every one to two years. Beyond the schedule, review immediately after any major life event — marriage, divorce, birth, death of a named fiduciary, a business sale, a relocation, or a significant change in federal tax law.

Does divorce automatically remove my ex-spouse from my Florida estate plan?

Partly. Florida Statutes §732.507 and §736.1105 void gifts to a former spouse in your will and revocable trust upon dissolution of marriage. However, these statutes do NOT remove an ex-spouse named as beneficiary on a life insurance policy, IRA, 401(k), or annuity. You must update those beneficiary designations directly, or the proceeds can still pass to your ex-spouse.

Is my out-of-state will still valid after moving to Florida?

Usually yes — a will validly executed in another state is generally recognized in Florida. But it may not be optimal. Out-of-state self-proving affidavits don’t always meet Florida’s §732.503 requirements, which can slow probate, and Florida’s homestead, healthcare surrogate, and power-of-attorney rules differ from other states. A relocation to North Miami or anywhere in Florida warrants a fresh review.

Why do physicians and high-liability professionals need more frequent reviews?

Because their estate plan does two jobs: distributing wealth and protecting it from creditors. Florida offers strong protections — homestead, tenancy by the entireties, and statutory shields for annuities and life insurance under §222.13 and §222.14 — but these interact with estate documents in ways that can break if assets are retitled. Frequent review keeps protection intact and catches problems before a creditor or lawsuit does.

What is the most common estate planning mistake an attorney finds during a review?

An unfunded revocable trust. Clients sign a well-drafted trust but never retitle their accounts and real estate into it. Because the assets remain in their individual name, those assets still go through probate at death — defeating the main purpose of the trust. Confirming that the trust is actually funded is one of the most important parts of any review.