Ohio Family Law Blog

After a termination of the marriage of a man and woman, the newly divorced man or woman often fails to consider reviewing and updating his or her estate planning documents a top priority. In the past, this sometimes resulted in unfortunate and unintended consequences. It is long-standing statutory law in the State of Ohio that if after executing a will, the individual executing the will is divorced, obtains a dissolution, has a marriage annulled or obtains a legal separation, any conveyance of property in the will to the former spouse or to a trust available to the former spouse or any nomination of the former spouse as executor, trustee, or guardian is revoked, unless the will expressly provides otherwise. However, until recently, Ohio statutory law did not address the effect of the termination of a marriage on previously executed designations of the ex-spouse as power of attorney, trust beneficiary, death beneficiary or joint property owner. For example, until recently, an ex-spouse named as beneficiary on a life insurance policy would still receive the insurance benefits unless the owner of the policy had changed the beneficiary designation after … Read More... “Estate Planning After Divorce, Statutory Protections Against The Ex-Spouse”