Estate Planning After Divorce for Seattle Tech Professionals: What to Update Now

Now that your divorce has been finalized and you have an agreement in place, it’s time to update your estate plan to reflect where you are in your life right now. This includes not only reexamining the relationships you have but also your assets, the latter of which is particularly important for tech professionals due to the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of the tech sector. 

While aspects of your life may have shifted as a consequence of your divorce, the estate planning documents you had pre-divorce won’t update themselves to reflect these shifts. Nor will important documents outside your estate that could have a direct bearing on how and what your loved ones inherit. 

The solution? Reviewing and updating key documents so they align with your current wishes. If you are a tech professional who’s recently gotten divorced, here are the documents that may require updates.  

Will & Trusts

Generally, when a couple is married, they have a will that makes their spouse the beneficiary of a portion, but oftentimes, their entire estate. Presumably, following a divorce, you would no longer want that to be the case. 

Washington law presumes this as well. State law provides that if an individual divorces or dissolves their domestic partnership, any provisions pertaining to that individual’s spouse would also be revoked. It’s important to note that this law does not revoke the entire will. 

Not every asset goes through probate, however. What then? Washington law provides protections for nonprobate assets, including payable-on-death assets, revocable trusts, and life insurance as well. 

While these protections help when a question arises as to who is the rightful beneficiary post-divorce in the absence of updated estate planning documents and other non-probate beneficiary designations, it can cause unnecessary conflict among your heirs that revisiting these documents could avoid. While these laws provide guidance for interpretation, they are not fail-safe. 

A more secure path is to revise your will after divorce so that (a) your beneficiary designations and any revocable trusts you create are in line with your circumstances for the foreseeable future and (b) the people holding important estate planning roles are people you continue to trust in these roles (executors, who will hold powers of attorney for finance and health care, guardians, and trustees) and (c) the assets you own are accurately reflected. Following a divorce, every one of these elements can change.    

That being said, life is not always this eventful. In the absence of a life passage, such as a birth, death, marriage, divorce, or remarriage, or if you simply have a change of heart, you should plan on reviewing your estate planning documents every three to five years. Calendaring estate plan reviews are valuable for tech professionals who can be more prone to seeing drastic changes in the value of their assets, up or down.

Medical and Financial Powers of Attorney

There are two types of powers of attorney that you might (and should have) as part of your estate plan that you could choose to change following a divorce. They are a financial power of a attorney and a medical power of attorney. 

Both of these documents are essentially the same inasmuch as they grant an individual you choose to have decision-making authority over finances and health care decisions, respectively, that affect you. You need these documents in the event you are in a position where you are unable to make these decisions for yourself. 

The person whom you pick to have power of attorney over finances need not be the same person who you pick to make decisions about your health. You want to pick the person for each who you think will be most equipped to make decisions aligned with what you would want during what can only be described as a stressful situation. 

The person with a medical power of attorney can execute decisions about anything pertaining to your health, such as whether to move you to a different hospital, allow you to receive certain medications, and more. If you’re concerned about life-saving measures, you could describe how you envision your treatment in another advance directive called a living will. 

In terms of a financial power of attorney, this document will authorize someone you trust to have access to whatever accounts you allow them to for the purpose of paying your bills, including medical bills, should you, again, be unable to do so on your own. This person, via the authority of the financial power of attorney, will also be able to speak with your insurance company regarding your care.

All three of these documents — the medical power of attorney, the living will, and the financial power of attorney — are types of advance care directives, and each is valuable in its own way. An added plus? If you’re concerned about giving someone, even someone you trust, this level of authority over your life, you can limit it to specific functions and a specific period of time, such as only taking effect when you’re incapacitated. This is the meaning of “durable” whenever it appears in front of the words power of attorney.

Beneficiary Designations Outside Your Will and Trusts

As discussed earlier, because not every asset transfer will be subject to probate, it’s best, in spite of Washington’s legal protections, to change your beneficiary designations directly on assets that are payable on death. When an asset, such as life insurance, retirement account, or revocable trust, is payable on death, it won’t pass through your will but, instead, outside of it. Therefore, the beneficiaries you have listed in your will won’t have access to these assets. Arguing this point after the fact in court can be tedious, expensive, and, in the end, not lead to your desired result.

Digital Accounts

As a tech professional, you may lead a particularly digital life. That said, anyone should take care to provide access to digital accounts to someone they trust. This can be included as part of a will.

Apart from naming the person who will be in charge through likely your financial power of attorney, it’s important to keep a list of emails and passwords in a safe but accessible place. Common accounts requiring logins and passwords are: 

• Email accounts
  
• Social media accounts
  
• Online dating or gaming accounts
  
• Online chatroom accounts
  
• Online banking accounts
  
• Online accounts for utilities
  
• Online subscription-based accounts
  
• E-commerce or marketplace accounts (i.e., Amazon, eBay, etc.)
  
• Loyalty program benefits (i.e., frequent flyer miles, credit card perks, etc.)
  
• Cell phone apps
  
• Photos saved online or in the cloud
  
• Any other personal information you store on your computer, cell phone, or tablet
  

This list should be kept in the same place where you keep your will. However, that place should not be a safe deposit box, as it can be sealed by a bank once the institution learns of your death. 

Unsealing a sealed safe deposit box could entail a lot of red tape, which could ironically be sped up with access to the will that is now inaccessible. It can become quite the conundrum and headache. It’s far better to store important documents that you need to be accessible in a fireproof box or envelope.

Speak to a Seattle Estate Planning Lawyer to Update Your Estate Plan Following a Tech Divorce

The life of a tech professional, like their careers, can be complex. Having an estate planning lawyer to make sense of it can help you in your life and your loved ones upon your death. 

At Elise Buie Family Law, our team of Seattle estate planning attorneys is well-versed in Washington estate planning laws as they would apply to tech professionals and can support you in your estate planning. Contact us today or schedule a convenient time to speak.