Estate Planning for Snowbirds (Transcript)
D. "Rep" DeLoach III, Estate Planning and Board Certified Elder Law Attorney
We think about planning for a snowbird. We know for instance that people come down here for years, but they still have kept their home up north in Massachusetts or Ohio or whatever. What they do is they would always get their estate planning done from an Ohio perspective or from a Massachusetts perspective. Wherever their home state is, you always do your estate planning with the domicile where you live.
When you move to Florida or if you've transitioned fully. You say, "I've been coming to Florida for 20 years and now this is, I'm finally making it, this my home, I'm selling my home in Ohio." Then you'd want your new Florida attorney to review your estate planning documents, and they may still be good. The documents that you did in Ohio or Massachusetts or what have you, they may still be good or they're likely to be good, but they would also likely need to have some small adjustments or changes.
We said earlier, for instance, that people procrastinate on estate planning. By the time they moved down from Ohio anyway, and they're now getting the documents looked at by a Florida attorney, there's probably likely the documents are fairly old anyway, and so the new Florida attorney would review the documents. If they're good, then they're good. They don't need to have any changes. They'll probably need some small adjustments, but maybe not as big as that person would think.
