Before You Say “I Do” Again: What Remarriage Really Means for Your Estate Plan
June has a way of making everything feel possible. The evenings are long, the rosé is cold, and somewhere in your social circle, someone is getting engaged! Maybe that someone is you!!!
I have enormous love for second marriages. I have seen what it looks like when someone who has done the hard work of understanding themselves—and what went wrong the first time—walks into a relationship with real clarity and real intention. It is genuinely one of the more hopeful things I witness in this work.
And I also need to tell you, as your attorney friend who has seen what happens when this conversation doesn’t happen: the moment you say yes is the moment your estate plan needs your attention. Not eventually. Now.
This isn’t about being unromantic. It’s about understanding what the law does to your assets—and to your children’s inheritance—the moment you sign a marriage certificate, whether you’ve thought about it or not.
1. Your Existing Will Doesn’t Protect Your New Spouse—and That’s a Problem
Virginia does not revoke your will simply because you get married. Your existing will remains valid after the wedding. The problem is what happens because of that.
Under Virginia Code § 64.2-422, if you marry someone who is not provided for in your existing will, your new spouse may be entitled to take an intestate share of your estate as an “omitted spouse”—unless the will was drafted in contemplation of the marriage, or the omission was clearly intentional on the face of the will. In plain terms: a will that was perfectly adequate before your engagement can create a legal conflict the moment the ceremony ends, because your new spouse now has a statutory claim your documents never anticipated.
This matters for two reasons. First, if your estate plan was designed to protect children from a prior relationship, an omitted spouse claim can disrupt exactly what you intended. Second, if you want your new spouse to be fully provided for, a will that doesn’t name them creates ambiguity that your estate—and your family—will have to sort out later.
The fix is a new will—or a carefully updated one—that reflects your life as it actually exists after the wedding. Draft it with explicit language about your marriage and your intentions.
2. The Accounts Your Will Can’t Touch
Here is where things get quietly complicated for a lot of people. Your retirement accounts, your life insurance policies, and many bank and investment accounts pass by beneficiary designation—completely outside your will, regardless of what your will says.
A will cannot override a beneficiary designation. This is one of the most common and most painful oversights I see in estate administration, and it is entirely preventable.
3. What Happens to Your Children If Your New Spouse Survives You
This is the conversation that matters most to the women I work with who are remarrying with children from a prior relationship, and it deserves more than a paragraph. I’ll give it one anyway and tell you to call me for the rest.
If you leave your estate outright to your new spouse, your children from your first marriage have no legal claim to it. Your spouse can do whatever they choose with those assets—including leaving everything to their own children, a future spouse, or a cause you’ve never heard of. This is not a cynical take on second marriages. It is what the law allows, and it happens. I received none of my father’s personal belongings, not even a sweater, and it was devastating.
Blended families require blended estate planning tools. A well-drafted trust can provide for your new spouse during their lifetime while preserving the principal for your children. But do this carefully; think about your children’s and spouse’s ages. Your children may have significant needs before your spouse passes. There are several structures that accomplish this, and the right one depends on the size of your estate, the ages of your children, and what you and your new spouse have agreed to. Which brings me to the next section.
4. A Prenuptial Agreement Is Not a Lack of Faith. It’s Architecture.
I am going to be direct with you because I think you deserve it: if you are remarrying with assets, with children, or with a business, you should have a prenuptial agreement.
Not as a hedge against the marriage failing. As a clear-eyed acknowledgment of what each of you is bringing in, what you want to protect, and how you want the financial structure of your life together to work.
A good prenup does not assume the worst. It removes ambiguity. It protects the children from your first marriage. It ensures your business doesn’t become a marital asset subject to division. It allows you both to have the conversation about money—the one couples almost never have clearly enough—before you’re legally bound.
I have had clients tell me their partner would see a prenup as a sign of distrust. I understand that instinct. I also know that the couples who have the hardest divorces—the ones that take years and cost everyone the most—are the ones who never had the financial conversation at all. A prenup is that conversation, made legally binding.
Both parties need independent legal counsel for a prenup to be enforceable in Virginia. Start this process at least three to four months before your wedding. An agreement signed under time pressure, or without adequate review, is an agreement that may not hold.
5. The Short List: What to Do Before the Wedding Date Is Set
If this article has done anything, I hope it has convinced you that the legal side of remarriage is not something to ignore. Here is where to start:
Pull out your existing will and estate planning documents. If they were drafted before this relationship, they almost certainly need to be updated—not just amended, but reconsidered from the ground up.
Review every beneficiary designation on every account you hold. Make a list. Update what needs updating.
If you have children from a prior relationship, talk to an estate attorney about trust structures before you decide how to title assets with your new spouse.
Consider whether a prenuptial agreement makes sense for your situation. If it does, start the conversation now—not the month before the wedding.
Second marriages, when they work, are extraordinary things. They are built by people who know themselves better, who have survived something hard, and who have chosen to try again with intention. The legal groundwork is just that—groundwork. It is what you build the good thing on.
If you have questions about any of this, you know where to find me.
