People often come to me with a trust another attorney wrote years ago and ask, “Can you just review it and tell me if it’s still okay?” It’s a good instinct. Here’s the honest, useful answer — and how updating an older trust actually works.
The main reason old trusts need updating: the law
The biggest thing that ages a trust usually has nothing to do with your family — it’s the law. The rules that govern how trusts work, what makes documents valid and enforceable, and the tax assumptions built into them change over time (not every year, but often enough to matter). A good rule of thumb: a trust that’s about five years old may be due for an update, and one that’s ten years or older almost certainly should be. Outdated provisions can misfire at exactly the moment your family is relying on them — and bringing the document current with today’s law is my job.
Your changing life is the other reason
The law is one driver; the other is simply your life. When the people or circumstances written into your plan change — someone you’d no longer want in charge, a beneficiary who has passed away, a new person you’d want to include — that’s a real reason to update, whatever the law happens to be doing. How often it comes up depends entirely on your life: some people go many years with nothing worth changing, others have something every year or two. You don’t need to study the document to know — you’ll generally feel when something meaningful has shifted. (If you’d like to think it through, this article is worth a read.)
Married? The old “A/B” trust is a genuine trap
This one is worth taking seriously. If you’re married and your trust is more than roughly ten or fifteen years old, it may automatically split into two trusts when the first spouse dies — often called an “A/B” or bypass trust. It was built to dodge estate tax back when the exemption was low. Today the exemption is high enough ($15 million per person in 2026) that almost no families need it — and keeping it can quietly cost your family in two serious ways:
- Potentially huge negative tax consequences. Funding the B trust can saddle your family with significant, avoidable tax costs down the road — the opposite of what the structure was supposed to do.
- A possible trip to court. While both spouses are alive, this is a simple fix: we restate the trust and the mandatory split is gone. But wait until the first spouse dies, and that split usually locks in — and undoing it then can require a court proceeding. Far cheaper and easier to handle now, together.
If a mandatory A/B split is buried in your trust, it’s one of the most important reasons to update it — and to do it sooner rather than later. (You can learn more about A/B trusts here.)
How I update it: a restatement
Think of your trust as a room that holds your things. The original attorney built you the room and gave you a trust document — the instructions for how it all works. Over the years, it’s not the room that goes out of date; it’s the instructions.
A restatement keeps the original room, so everything you’ve put in there stays right where it is, and simply replaces the instructions with new, up-to-date ones — current with today’s law and your life now. No emptying the room, no hauling your things into a new one, no re-titling every account and deed. And you don’t have to itemize what’s changed — a restatement brings the whole thing current at once, so nothing gets left behind.
One note on the fine print: I don’t amend trusts other attorneys drafted — a restatement is the clean way to bring an older plan current and make it one I can stand behind. And the payoff lasts: once your trust is one of mine, future changes are easy. A small update becomes a quick, inexpensive amendment — not a big project — because I’ll amend my own trusts anytime life shifts.
Moved to California? Your out-of-state plan needs attention
Two situations here. If your trust is from another state and you still live there, I’m not the right person — a trust governed by another state’s law needs an attorney licensed in that state.
But if you’ve moved to California, your old out-of-state plan needs updating, and it’s worth doing sooner rather than later. As a California resident, your estate is now governed by California law — and how an out-of-state document interacts with California’s rules is unpredictable, which is exactly the uncertainty an estate plan is supposed to remove. The fix isn’t to tinker with the old document; it’s to put a proper California plan in place. That’s work I do.
What this looks like with me
Just schedule a free 15-minute consultation — no need to send me the old trust. We’ll talk through your situation, and I’ll tell you honestly what your plan needs. If we move forward, I quote a flat fee upfront.