Request Reprint Send us your request to reprint copyrighted material. To further complicate matters, laws often change, and professionals are always gaining more experience and insight in how best to deal with those changes. Although California law does have provisions which act to eliminate a former spouse as a beneficiary, the same is not true in every state. Often, unmarried partners live together, and without a specific estate plan to provide for the partner, the partner will inherit nothing. Change of beneficiaries.
Clients are often surprised at exactly who they designated as beneficiaries, and in what amounts.
Also, changes of heart occur, and beneficiaries who may have been appropriate in the past may not be any more. Change of personal representative. Personal representatives are selected in estate plans to act as executors of the estate or as trustee of a living trust, and a certain amount of confidence is placed in their ability to take on that role. That confidence is sometimes an issue as the personal representatives change or relationships alter. In the event that the unfortunate should occur, and the parent is no longer available to raise the child, a guardian should be appointed in the estate planning documents for that purpose.