Should you review your estate plan?

Creating your estate plan is a big step in end of life planning. But once you create it, you have to maintain upkeep. After all, your estate plan must reflect your life circumstances, which constantly change.

So when should you update your plan? Is there anything in particular you should prioritize when deciding what to update?

Review your plan every three years

Forbes looks into reasons why you should review your estate plan, along with the parts you may want to invest the most focus toward. First, experts suggest you review your plan once every three years regardless of life circumstances. Even if nothing changes, it helps to refresh your memory about its contents. You may have faced a change that you forgot about, which you can address after your review.

Otherwise, you want to review any time you face major changes in your circumstances. In particular, changes in finances and beneficiaries have a big impact on your estate plan. You want changes to reflect sudden financial gain or losses. You also want to reflect any loss of loved ones, divorces, estrangement, adoption and more.

Focus on beneficiaries

When reviewing your plan, focus on beneficiaries, health care proxy and power of attorney. Make sure that you still trust the people holding these positions. You also want to review your will and trust, which are two of the biggest parts of your overall estate plan.

Reviewing and updating an estate plan can sometimes have little to no difficulties. In other cases, you may need the aid of an attorney to help you tailor your plan to meet your new needs.