Short answer: yes. And probably sooner than you think.
Divorce changes almost everything about your estate plan. Your will, your trust, your power of attorney, your beneficiary designations, your life insurance. All of it was set up with the assumption that you and your spouse would be together for the long haul. Once that changes, the plan needs to change too. A Northbrook, IL estate planning lawyer can help you update every part of your plan so it reflects your new circumstances and protects your future.
Illinois law does some of this work automatically, but not all of it. And the parts it doesn’t handle are exactly the parts that create serious, expensive problems for your family down the road.
What Illinois Law Does Automatically
Under 755 ILCS 5/4‐7, once your divorce is finalized, any provisions in your will that benefit your former spouse are automatically revoked by operation of law. The statute treats your ex as though they predeceased you. So if your will left everything to your spouse and then to your children, the court would skip the spouse entirely and go straight to the kids.
That sounds clean, and in some ways it is. It prevents the most obvious disaster scenario where your ex inherits everything because you forgot to update your will. But it creates its own complications. If your will named your spouse as executor, that appointment is also revoked. If it named your spouse as guardian of your minor children, that provision is gone too. Now you have a will with holes in it, and the court has to fill them based on whatever the statute says rather than what you actually want.
The automatic revocation also only applies to the will. It does not cover every other piece of your estate plan, and that’s where people get into trouble.
What the Law Does Not Fix for You
Revocable living trusts
If your trust names your ex as a beneficiary, as co trustee, or as successor trustee, you need to amend the trust document. Illinois law does not automatically strip your former spouse from a trust the way it does with a will. The trust is a separate legal entity with its own terms, and those terms survive the divorce unless you change them. If you set up a joint trust with your spouse, it likely needs to be revoked entirely and replaced with a new individual trust.
Powers of attorney
If your ex is named as your agent for property decisions or healthcare decisions, those documents are still active until you formally revoke them and sign new ones. This is urgent. Right now, today, if you were in a car accident and couldn’t speak for yourself, your former spouse could be the one making medical decisions on your behalf. They could be the one managing your bank accounts and paying your bills. That might have made perfect sense during the marriage. It almost certainly doesn’t make sense anymore.
Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts
This is the one that catches the most people by surprise. Your 401(k), your IRA, your pension, your life insurance policy: these all pass by beneficiary designation, not by your will. The beneficiary form you filled out with your employer or your insurance company controls who gets that money when you die. Period. If your ex is still listed as the beneficiary on your 401(k), they get the money. It does not matter that your will says something completely different. It does not matter that your divorce decree awards those assets to your children. The beneficiary designation wins.
For employer sponsored retirement plans governed by federal law (ERISA), the situation is even more rigid. Federal law preempts state law, which means your divorce decree and Illinois statutes have no effect on who receives the proceeds. The Supreme Court settled this issue years ago. If the beneficiary form says your ex, your ex gets the money.
Transfer on death instruments
If you signed a TODI naming your ex as the beneficiary of your home, that instrument needs to be revoked and replaced. A recorded TODI operates independently of your will. Even if your will says “I leave my house to my children,” the TODI overrides it.
Payable on death and transfer on death accounts
Bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and savings accounts that are set up with a POD or TOD designation work the same way as beneficiary designations on retirement accounts. They pass outside the will directly to the named person. If that person is your ex, your ex gets the account balance. These are easy to overlook because they’re just a form you filled out at the bank years ago and probably haven’t thought about since.
The Divorce Decree Is Not Enough
A lot of people assume that because their divorce agreement says “each party waives all rights to the other’s estate,” they’re fully covered. That language matters in some legal contexts, but it does not automatically change your beneficiary designations. It does not amend your trust. It does not revoke your power of attorney. It does not update the TOD designation on your brokerage account.
You have to do all of that separately, document by document, account by account. And until you do, the old designations and the old documents are the ones that control what happens to your assets when you die.
This is not a theoretical problem. There are real cases, well documented in court opinions, where a surviving second spouse or children from a second marriage received nothing because the decedent never updated a beneficiary form from the first marriage. The money went to the ex. And the courts upheld it because the law is clear: the designation controls.
When Should You Do This?
Ideally, as soon as your divorce is finalized. Some changes, like revoking a power of attorney, should be done even before the divorce is final if you and your spouse have separated and the relationship has broken down.
During the divorce process in Illinois, an automatic temporary restraining order goes into effect that prevents both spouses from making major changes to insurance policies, financial accounts, and certain other assets. This is designed to maintain the status quo while the case is pending. But once the decree is entered, those restrictions lift and you are free to update everything.
Waiting creates risk. Every day that passes between your divorce and the day you update your estate plan is a day where the wrong people are named on the wrong documents. If something happens to you during that window, the old plan is the one that applies. Your family gets whatever the outdated documents say, regardless of what you actually intended.
A Complete Checklist for After the Divorce
- Execute a new will. Even though Illinois law revokes the provisions for your ex, a clean will avoids confusion and lets you name new beneficiaries, a new executor, and new guardians for minor children if applicable. Don’t rely on the automatic revocation to do the work for you. A fresh will makes your intentions crystal clear.
- Amend or restate your revocable trust. Remove your ex as beneficiary, co trustee, and successor trustee. Update the distribution instructions to reflect your current wishes. If you had a joint trust with your spouse, revoke it and create a new individual trust from scratch.
- Sign new powers of attorney. Name someone you trust right now for both healthcare decisions and property management. These are arguably the most urgent documents to replace because they affect what happens if you’re incapacitated, not just when you die.
- Update every single beneficiary designation. Life insurance policies, 401(k) plans, IRAs, pensions, annuities, payable on death bank accounts, transfer on death brokerage accounts. Check every one of them individually and change the beneficiary where needed. Don’t assume any of them updated automatically.
- Review your real estate. If property was transferred as part of the divorce settlement, make sure the deed reflects the correct ownership. If you have a transfer on death instrument on your home, revoke it and record a new one with the correct beneficiary.
- Review your digital accounts. Remove your ex from shared cloud storage, password managers, and any online accounts where they have access or are listed as a recovery contact. Update your digital estate plan if you have one.
- Update your emergency contacts. Hospitals, schools, daycare providers, your employer. Make sure the right people are listed everywhere.
A Word About Remarriage
If you remarry after your divorce, you need to go through this entire process again. A new marriage does not automatically undo the estate plan you created after your divorce. Your new spouse has no legal rights under your existing documents unless you update them.
In Illinois, a surviving spouse has certain statutory rights to a share of your estate regardless of what your will says. This is called the elective share. If your documents haven’t been updated to account for your new spouse, it can create a conflict between your new spouse’s legal rights and the instructions in your existing plan. That conflict often ends up in court, which is exactly what estate planning is supposed to prevent.
Every major life event requires a fresh look at your estate plan. Divorce is one of the most significant, but it’s rarely the last one.
Don’t Leave This for Later
Divorce is exhausting. By the time the decree is final, most people are burned out on legal paperwork and just want to move on with their lives. That’s completely understandable. But this is one of those situations where a few hours of focused work now prevents a disaster later.
If your ex is still listed as the beneficiary on your life insurance policy when you die, and you’ve been remarried for ten years, your current spouse doesn’t get that money. Your ex does. That’s not a hypothetical. It happens more often than anyone likes to talk about, and it’s almost always preventable with a single phone call and a form change. Kravets Law Group can help you review and update your estate plan so everything reflects your current wishes and protects the people who matter most.
The full text of the Illinois Probate Act, including the automatic revocation provision at 755 ILCS 5/4‐7, is available through the Illinois General Assembly’s website at ilga.gov.