Updating Your Will After Divorce in Alabama | The Harris Firm LLC

Alabama Revokes Your Ex From Your Will Automatically. It Leaves Everything Else Exactly As It Was.

After a divorce, Alabama treats your former spouse as if they died before you, for the will’s purposes. That fixes one line and ignores the rest: their family, the backup executor, the guardian nomination, and every beneficiary form that never lived in the will. The Harris Firm LLC prepares the new will. Phone consultations are free.

The divorce decree closes the marriage. It does not close your estate plan, and most people do not think about the will until something forces the question. A new simple will is a flat $750, signed in a few weeks, and the phone call to start it is free.

What Alabama Revokes After a Divorce, and What It Doesn’t

Revoked automatically. Any gift to the former spouse, and the former spouse’s nomination as executor, trustee, or guardian, is treated as if the ex had died before you. The will otherwise stands as written. This happens on divorce or annulment, not on separation, and it applies only to a will signed before the divorce.

Not revoked. Gifts to your former in-laws. Your ex as the beneficiary of the alternate provisions, if the will named them twice in different roles. A structure that assumed a married household: the house to the spouse, the residue split among the children, with no thought to what happens when the spouse is gone from the picture. The result is often an estate that goes somewhere you never intended, or that gets tangled in a dispute over what the revocation statute reached.

Not part of the will at all. Life insurance, 401(k) and IRA accounts, annuities, and payable-on-death bank and brokerage accounts pass by the beneficiary form on file. Alabama’s revocation rule does not reliably reach those, and for employer plans governed by ERISA the U.S. Supreme Court has held the named beneficiary takes regardless of state law. An ex-spouse still named on a 401(k) inherits it. This is the single most consequential post-divorce mistake we see, and the will cannot fix it.

What a Post-Divorce Will Update Covers

Beneficiaries. Who inherits now: children outright or in trust, a new partner, parents, siblings, a charity. The backups if a beneficiary dies first, which is where the old will’s in-law gifts were hiding.

Executor and trustee. A new primary and a new backup. If the old will named your ex first and a relative of theirs second, both are gone.

Children. A guardian nomination for the scenario where both parents die, and a testamentary trust that holds the children’s inheritance until the ages you choose, managed by a trustee you name rather than by your ex as the children’s natural guardian. Our testamentary trust page explains how that works.

Powers of attorney and health care directive. These almost always name the spouse and they are not revoked by divorce. Until they are replaced, your ex may hold authority over your finances and your medical care if you are incapacitated. We replace them with the will.

Beneficiary forms. We give you the list and the order: retirement plans and life insurance first, then bank and brokerage accounts, then anything else with a designation. This step is on you, since only the account owner can change the form, but we make sure nothing is missed. Our after your divorce checklist covers the rest of the post-decree cleanup.

Do You Need a New Will, or Just an Update?

A codicil must be signed with the same two witnesses and self-proving affidavit as a will. Handwritten changes on the old will are not effective and can call the whole document into question. When in doubt, sign a new will.

Updating Your Will After Divorce

Two to three weeks from the first call to a signed will.

Updating Your Will After Divorce — Frequently Asked Questions

Divorce Final? Update the Will Now. Free Phone Consultation.

Bring the old will and the decree. One free call tells you what Alabama revoked, what it left standing, and what the new plan needs. A simple will is a flat $750.