Estate Planning Across the Life Course: Updates, Family Conversations, and Edge Cases

An estate plan is not a one-time event. It needs to change as your life changes, and it needs to be communicated to the people who will eventually act on it. This applied course addresses the long-term work of keeping a plan effective and the edge cases that complicate it. By the end of this course you will be able to schedule plan updates tied to life events, hold productive conversations with family and beneficiaries, handle complex situations such as blended families and business interests, and integrate retirement and long-term care planning with the estate plan. What you will learn: - How to set a review schedule tied to events such as marriage, divorce, births, deaths, moves, and major asset changes - How to update beneficiary designations across all account types after major events - How to have family conversations that surface concerns without giving up your decisions - How to handle blended families, including children from prior relationships and a current spouse - How to integrate business interests including succession planning and buy-sell agreements - How to plan for a special-needs child or adult through a special-needs trust - How to align retirement, long-term care, and estate planning into a coherent whole The course is structured around six applied modules. Each produces a written artifact: a review schedule, an event-triggered checklist, a family conversation plan, a blended-family or business case worksheet, a special-needs planning sketch, and an integration document. This course is written for adults who already have a basic estate plan and who want to keep it working across life stages. By the end you will move from one-time planning to a maintained system, and the plan you leave will reflect the life you actually lived and the people in it.