Divorce and your estate plan in Florida: what changes, what doesn't Divorce and your estate plan in Florida: what changes, what doesn't

• Wills: Section 732.507(2) voids any provision of a will affecting the former spouse upon divorce — the will is administered as if the ex died first.
• Revocable trusts: Section 736.1105 provides parallel treatment for revocable trust provisions.
• Beneficiary designations: Florida's standout — section 732.703 voids designations in favor of a former spouse on a broad class of assets: life insurance, annuities, IRAs, pay-on-death accounts, and more.

Then the hole in the net, and it's the usual one: ERISA. Employer retirement plans and employer-provided life insurance follow federal law and pay the beneficiary on the plan's form, whatever Florida's statute says. The un-updated 401(k) form remains the most expensive piece of paper in American probate. Florida's automatic net is broad — treat it as backup, not strategy, and update everything by hand.

Until final judgment, Florida law protects your spouse robustly: the elective share (30% of the elective estate — a broad calculation that reaches many nonprobate assets) can't be defeated by a new will; homestead law restricts devising your primary residence away from a spouse; and your spouse likely holds your powers of attorney and health care surrogacy. The pending-case playbook:

• Immediately: new financial power of attorney and health care surrogate/living will. No statute requires an estranged spouse to hold authority over your incapacity.
• Early, with counsel: a new will — accepting that elective share and homestead rights persist until judgment, the new will still governs everything they don't reach and replaces fiduciary appointments.
• Carefully: beneficiary changes during a pending dissolution may be restrained by standing orders in many Florida circuits. Sequence changes with your divorce counsel — protecting an asset via contempt is a bad trade.

QDRO execution on divided retirement plans; life insurance (Florida judgments frequently require maintained coverage as support security — read yours before touching anything); IRA and POD/TOD updates notwithstanding 732.703 (administrators process forms, not statutes); the deed and homestead consequences of the property division; trust amendments; new executor and guardian nominations; and the orphans — employer group life, HSAs, old annuities.

Brown Carrington coordinates Florida dissolutions with their estate consequences — elective share timing, homestead mechanics, QDROs, and the update sequence.