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

Indiana Code 29-1-5-8 does real work at the decree: divorce (or annulment) automatically revokes all provisions in your will in favor of your former spouse — bequests and fiduciary appointments — and the will operates as if the ex-spouse predeceased you. The rest of the will survives.

Now the holes in the net. The statute governs your will. It does not reach everything else your money actually flows through: many beneficiary designations, and — critically — anything governed by ERISA. Employer retirement plans and employer life insurance pay the named beneficiary on the form, federal law says so, and no Indiana statute or divorce decree recital overrides a stale designation the plan administrator still has on file. The post-divorce horror story is always the same document: a 401(k) form signed fifteen years ago.

Translation: Indiana's automatic revocation is a partial backstop. Update everything by hand, in the right order, anyway.

While the case is pending you're still married, and two realities follow. First, Indiana's provisional orders (and any restraining provisions in your case) may limit beneficiary and asset changes during the proceedings — coordinate every change with your divorce counsel before making it. Second, some documents can and usually should change immediately:

• Powers of attorney and health care representative appointments. Nothing obligates you to leave an estranged spouse holding authority over your finances and medical care through a year of litigation. Execute replacements.
• A new will. Your spouse retains statutory rights until the decree — Indiana protects a surviving spouse's elective share — but a new will still controls everything those rights don't reach, and replaces the ex as executor.
• Inventory the designations now — retirement plans, life insurance, POD/TOD accounts, HSAs — so the post-decree updates take a week, not a year of forgetting.

QDRO follow-through on divided retirement accounts (an ordered division without an executed QDRO is a lawsuit waiting), life insurance (noting the decree may require coverage as support security — read before changing), POD/TOD designations, deeds and titles, trust amendments, executor and guardian nominations, and the orphaned documents: employer group life, old annuities, that first-job 401(k).

Brown Carrington coordinates the Indiana divorce and its estate consequences as one engagement — decree terms, QDROs, and the update sequence, executed in order.