A marriage or long-term partnership is a journey of building a life together. You share dreams, make memories, and combine your worlds in countless ways. As you navigate life’s milestones, from buying a first home to watching your family grow, it’s essential that your financial and legal plans evolve with you. Estate planning is a crucial part of this process, providing a roadmap to protect your shared future and each other.
Regardless of whether you just said “I do” or are celebrating decades together, estate planning is a team sport. It is an ongoing conversation that strengthens your partnership and ensures you are both prepared for whatever lies ahead. This guide offers practical advice for couples at every stage, helping you align your goals and create a plan that reflects your life together.
The Foundation: Why Couples Must Plan Together
When you commit to a life partner, your individual “me” begins to merge into a collective “we.” Your finances become intertwined, your assets are often shared, and your futures are deeply connected. Without a joint estate plan, you leave the door open to confusion, legal complications, and potential heartbreak.
Planning together isn’t just about logistics; it’s an act of love and respect. It ensures that if one of you can no longer make decisions or passes away, the other is protected and empowered. It allows you to make critical choices as a team, rather than leaving one partner to guess what the other would have wanted during a time of immense stress and grief.
For Newlyweds: Building Your Plan from the Ground Up
The beginning of a marriage is filled with excitement and new beginnings. While drafting wills might not seem as romantic as planning your honeymoon, it is one of the most important first steps you can take as a couple. This is your chance to build a solid foundation.
1. Create or Update Your Wills
A will is a legal document that outlines how you want your assets distributed after your death. If you die without one (a status called “intestate”), the state will decide who gets your property. This process often overlooks your specific wishes and can create unintended consequences for your surviving spouse.
As a couple, you can create reciprocal wills, often called “mirror wills,” where you each leave your assets to the other. Most importantly, your will is where you can name a guardian for any future children, a decision that should never be left to a court.
2. Name Each Other as Beneficiaries
Many of your most significant assets pass outside of a will, through beneficiary designations. These include:
- Life insurance policies
- Retirement accounts (401(k)s, IRAs)
- Bank and brokerage accounts with “Payable on Death” (POD) or “Transfer on Death” (TOD) clauses
After getting married, it’s crucial to review and update these designations. An old policy that still names a parent or sibling as a beneficiary could accidentally disinherit your spouse, regardless of what your will says. Sit down together with a list of your accounts and make sure your new life partner is officially named.
3. Establish Powers of Attorney and Healthcare Directives
Estate planning also protects you during your lifetime. What happens if one of you is in an accident and becomes unable to make decisions?
- Durable Power of Attorney: This document lets you name a person (your agent) to manage your financial affairs if you become incapacitated. Naming your spouse ensures they can access joint accounts, pay bills, and manage investments without needing a court order.
- Healthcare Power of Attorney (or Healthcare Proxy): This allows your designated agent to make medical decisions on your behalf if you cannot.
- Living Will: This document outlines your wishes regarding end-of-life medical care, such as the use of life support. It removes an agonizing burden from your spouse, who won’t have to guess what you would have wanted.
For Longtime Couples: Adapting Your Plan to a Changing Life
If you have been together for years, your life looks very different than it did when you started. You may have children, more complex assets, or new priorities. An estate plan is not a “set it and forget it” document. It should be reviewed every three to five years, or after any major life event.
1. Review and Update Everything
Life changes, and your plan must change with it. Common triggers for an update include:
- The birth or adoption of children or grandchildren
- A significant change in financial status (inheritance, promotion, business sale)
- The purchase of a new home or major asset
- Divorce or death in the family (especially if it involves a previously named beneficiary or guardian)
- A change in your health or your spouse’s health
Pull out your existing documents and read them together. Do they still reflect your wishes? Is the guardian you named for your young children still the right choice now that they are teenagers? Are the asset distributions still fair and logical?
2. Consider a Trust for Greater Control
While a will is a great start, many longtime couples can benefit from a more sophisticated tool: a living trust. A revocable living trust is an entity you create to hold your assets. You can act as the trustee during your lifetime, maintaining full control.
The key benefits of a trust include:
- Avoiding Probate: Assets held in a trust bypass the probate process, a court-supervised procedure for validating a will that can be time-consuming, expensive, and public. This means your surviving spouse gets access to assets faster and with less hassle.
- Incapacity Planning: If you become incapacitated, your chosen successor trustee (often your spouse) can step in immediately to manage the trust’s assets without court intervention.
- Control Over Distributions: You can set specific conditions for how and when beneficiaries receive assets. This is especially useful for protecting assets for children from a previous marriage, providing for a special needs dependent, or preventing a young heir from spending their inheritance unwisely.
3. Plan for Long-Term Care
The longer we live, the higher the chance we will need some form of long-term care. The costs can be staggering and can quickly deplete a couple’s life savings. Medicare typically does not cover extended nursing home stays, so proactive planning is essential.
Longtime couples should discuss long-term care insurance and other elder law strategies. Certain types of trusts and asset-protection techniques can help you qualify for Medicaid to cover care costs without having to spend down everything you have worked for. This planning protects the financial security of the healthy spouse.
A Unified Front for a Secure Future
Whether you are just starting out or have shared a lifetime together, estate planning is one of the most profound ways to honor your partnership. It is a process that fosters communication, clarifies your shared values, and provides a safety net for the person you love most.
By tackling this task as a team, you replace uncertainty with clarity and fear with peace of mind. You ensure that your legacy is one of love, protection, and thoughtfulness, shielding your partner from chaos when they will need comfort the most.
Your life together is unique. Your estate plan should be too. If you’re ready to start the conversation or update your existing plan, contact us today. We can help you create a plan that protects your shared future.