Divorce and your estate plan in Georgia: one automatic fix, one dangerous gap Divorce and your estate plan in Georgia: one automatic fix, one dangerous gap

Under OCGA § 53-4-49, a final divorce (or annulment) makes your will effective as though your former spouse failed to survive you — bequests to the ex lapse, and their fiduciary appointments fall away, with the rest of the will intact. Useful, real, automatic.

Now the gap. Life insurance beneficiary designations: not revoked by Georgia divorce — the named ex collects, and Georgia courts have enforced exactly that result. IRAs, annuities, POD/TOD accounts: follow their forms. ERISA-governed employer plans: follow federal law and their forms, everywhere, always. Georgia divorce decrees can address these assets — a Settlement Agreement can require or waive designations — but the contract term doesn't change the payout mechanics; the form does. Which makes post-decree execution, in Georgia above all our states, the difference between an estate plan and a lawsuit between your ex and your heirs.

Until the final judgment, you're married -- and everything that comes with it still applies: your spouse likely holds your powers of attorney and health care directives, and is likely named your presumptive beneficiary on everything, and holds a surviving spouse's statutory rights — Georgia's year's support claim among them. The pending-case playbook: replace financial and healthcare powers of attorney immediately (no rule requires an estranged spouse to hold them); execute a new will early, understanding spousal claims persist until final judgment; and inventory every beneficiary designation now — coordinating any changes with counsel, noting that Standing Orders in many Georgia Courts restrain beneficiary and asset changes while the case pends.

Life insurance first — Georgia's most notorious gap -- then retirement accounts and QDRO execution (the decree directs, the QDRO delivers), IRAs, POD/TOD accounts, deeds and titles per the settlement, trust amendments, executor and guardian updates, employer group life, HSAs, and any policy your settlement requires you to maintain for support security — read the decree before touching that one. In Georgia, this checklist isn't housekeeping. It's estate planning.

Brown Carrington treats the Georgia divorce decree and the designation cleanup as one engagement — because in Georgia, the case isn't over until the forms say so.