Kathleen A. Hunt Estate Planning Law Blog on Lawyers.com

You finally did it. You made a will, set up a trust, took care of all your
estate planning. Whew - you're all done! Or are you?

Anna Nicole Smith wrote a will when she was only 33 years old. At the time,
she had one child, and she wanted to protect her son as best she could. She
didn't know that he would die before her - no parent ever wants to contemplate
such a thing. She had no idea that she would ever have another child. She
certainly never thought that she would die before she was even forty years old.
She thought she had done the responsible thing by writing a will, and she was
done. Yet, six years later, her untimely death sparked a firestorm of
litigation and the court ultimately ruled that she had died without a valid
will.  What happened?

Life happened. Things changed, the way they always do. Estate planning is
all about taking care of yourself and your heirs, investing in their future
while protecting your own. The trouble is, nobody really knows what that future
will look like. Lacking a reliable crystal ball, the only thing we can say for
sure is that there will be changes in your life.

Heath Ledger wrote a will at age 23, leaving his already-large estate to his
parents and siblings. He couldn't possibly have known that he would fall in
love two years later with a woman named Michelle Williams, much less that they
would have a child together. He had no way to know that his health would suffer
over the next few years as his movie-star career continued to thrive. If he had
been able to predict his own tragic death at age 28, he would surely have
updated his will. Even his fame and fortune couldn't take the place of that
crystal ball, though; depending on where he lived at the time of his death, his
beloved two-year-old daughter may have no legal claim on any part of his
estate.

You wouldn't expect your annual physical exam to guarantee lifelong health.
You take your car for regular maintenance. Your finances get a quick review at
tax-time, no matter what happens the rest of the year. Why should your estate
plan be any different?

Get your estate planning done as soon as you can.
Then, do an annual checkup every year. Even if your life hasn't changed much,
the laws might have. Check with your estate planning attorney; most people
should update their estate plans at least every 3-5 years. Diamonds may be
forever, but estate plans are not.

Comments? Questions? Contact me via email at kathleenhunt@uniquelaw.com or by phone at (510) 289-2288 anytime.