Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: the honest trigger list is shorter than the ones you will find elsewhere, because several of the classic “update your will!” events are already handled by statute. Divorce usually revokes your ex automatically. Marriage and a new baby usually do not revoke anything — they hand that person a statutory share instead, which is rarely what you would have chosen. The events that genuinely need a document are the ones no statute can guess at.
What the law already does for you
Divorce. In most states, dissolution automatically strikes your former spouse out of your will and out of most other revocable instruments. Minnesota’s version revokes any revocable “disposition, beneficiary designation, or appointment of property made in a governing instrument by an individual to the individual’s former spouse or any members of the former spouse’s family who are not also members of the individual’s family”, along with any power of appointment and any “nomination… to serve in any fiduciary or representative capacity, including a personal representative, executor, trustee, conservator, agent, or guardian” (Minn. Stat. §524.2-804, subd. 1). The provisions are then read “as if the former spouse died immediately before the dissolution” (subd. 2). Florida reaches the same result: any provision of a will affecting the spouse “is void upon dissolution of the marriage” and the will is read as if the spouse died then (Fla. Stat. §732.507(2)) — a rule that applies only to decedents dying on or after June 29, 2021 (§732.507(3)), which is the kind of effective date that makes older advice wrong rather than merely old.
Marriage and children. Florida is explicit: “Neither subsequent marriage, birth, nor adoption of descendants shall revoke the prior will of any person, but the pretermitted child or spouse shall inherit as set forth in ss. 732.301 and 732.302, regardless of the prior will” (§732.507(1)). Minnesota gives a spouse married after the will was signed “a share of the estate… equal in value to that which the surviving spouse would have received if the testator had died intestate”, subject to four exceptions including a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement (§524.2-301). A child born or adopted after the will is signed and not provided for gets a comparable statutory share (§524.2-302).
Read those together and the picture changes. Your new spouse and your new child are not disinherited by an old will — they are handed a share the legislature picked, carved out of gifts you did choose. That is a reason to update, but it is not the emergency it is usually sold as, and it is a different reason than the one you were given.
And nothing else counts. Minnesota closes the door in one sentence: “No change of circumstances other than as described in this section and in section 524.2-803 effects a revocation.” (§524.2-804, subd. 4; §524.2-803 is the slayer rule.) Moving house, selling the business, falling out with a beneficiary, a beneficiary dying — none of it revokes anything. The old document still governs, word for word.
The triggers that actually need a document
A beneficiary dies, and there is no backup. No statute fixes this the way you would. Depending on the state and the wording, the gift either lapses into the residue or is saved for that person’s descendants by an anti-lapse statute. Neither is a choice you made.
Your executor becomes unable, unwilling, or ineligible. Ineligible is the one nobody sees coming: Florida bars a personal representative who is not domiciled in the state unless they are a close relative (Fla. Stat. §733.304). Moving states can disqualify the person you named without touching the validity of the will itself.
The asset in the will no longer exists. A specific gift of “my shares in X” when X was sold in 2019 generally fails outright. The beneficiary gets nothing, and the residue absorbs the value.
A minor beneficiary grows up, or a beneficiary becomes disabled. A gift outright to a disabled beneficiary can cost them means-tested benefits — that is a trust question, not a will question, and it is urgent when it applies.
You move to a state with different marital-property rules. That is the one where the will can stay perfectly valid and still produce a result you did not intend — the mechanics are on the moving-states page.
You remarry. Not because remarriage revokes the will — it does not — but because the statutory spousal share, the elective share, and your children from the first marriage now interact in a way no default handles well.
The document that is not your will, and beats it
Updating the will while leaving the beneficiary forms alone is the single most common and most expensive version of this mistake. Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by contract, not by will, and the form beats the will every time. Note what Minnesota’s divorce-revocation statute carves out: it does not touch “a plan document governing a qualified or nonqualified retirement plan”. For an ERISA plan, the plan administrator follows the form on file and federal law backs them, whatever the state statute or the divorce decree says. If you are remarrying, work through the remarriage beneficiary checklist before you touch the will.
So how often, really
There is no statutory review interval and we are not going to invent one. A defensible rule: read the will after any of the triggers above, and otherwise skim it every few years to check three things — that the executor is still the right person and still eligible, that every named beneficiary is still alive and still someone you would name, and that the assets it describes still exist. That skim is free. If it turns up something, the question becomes a codicil or a new will, and the answer is usually a new will.
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Sources, and what we did not verify
Minn. Stat. §524.2-301 (premarital will), §524.2-302 (omitted children) and §524.2-804 (revocation by dissolution of marriage), read at the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes on 2026-08-06. Fla. Stat. §732.507 (effect of subsequent marriage, birth, adoption or dissolution) and §733.304 (nonresident personal representatives), read at the Florida Senate the same day.
What we did not verify: these two states are quoted because they are the ones we read today. Most states have equivalents, and a minority do not — a few still revoke a will on marriage outright. Do not assume your state matches Minnesota or Florida because most do; the per-state work we have finished is the execution library, not a 51-state revocation cross, and we would rather say so than imply coverage we have not built. Anti-lapse statutes are named above but not quoted — we have not read them at source.
See methodology, editorial policy and corrections. General information about how these statutes read, not legal advice for your estate — probate codes are amended every session and the read date above is what you are relying on.