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September 17, 2025 Posted In Estate Planning
Estate planning for a second marriage can be complex, especially when balancing obligations to children from a previous marriage, financial support for an ex-spouse, and ensuring fairness to a new spouse. Updating your estate plan after marriage, divorce, or widowhood is essential to reflect your current wishes, including modifying beneficiaries and financial arrangements.
Since Colorado has no set laws defining fairness in second-marriage estate planning, working with an experienced Denver estate planning lawyer can help you create a personalized plan that provides security and peace of mind for everyone involved.
Couples in second marriages may have different goals for retirement planning, long-term care needs, and obligations to their respective children. If the couple has children from other relationships, plus shared children, the estate plan can become even more complex.
Housing and ownership rights are another challenge that couples in a second marriage face. If one spouse owned a home, then the second spouse moved in years, or even decades, after the purchase, determining who inherits the house may be tricky if the new spouse contributed to paying the mortgage or upkeep of the marital home. Colorado law has provisions for situations like these, but it often takes the help of an experienced estate planning attorney to complete it.
Long-term care and retirement planning are another challenge couples face when estate planning for a second marriage. It’s not unusual for the couple to have significantly imbalanced retirement investments. One spouse may have over a million in investments and savings, while the other may have much less. Estate planning can address this concern, too.
In a second marriage, the couple may bring children from their first marriage and possibly go on to have shared children.
Whether the children are minors or adults can have some bearing on the couple’s estate plan. From a guardianship standpoint, there may need to be adjustments to the estate plan for any minor children of each spouse.
Then there’s the question of inheritance for all the children. Both spouses bring different life insurance policies and, possibly, existing trusts to the new marriage. Is it fair for one spouse to use marital funds to “even out” their child’s lesser inheritance so that it is closer in value to the other spouse’s children?
Estate planning usually involves putting aside assets and money for children, including a trust for each child’s education, or creating an education account. Balancing each child’s needs can be tricky and sometimes contentious.
Clearing the financial air is critical to preparing for a second marriage. For many couples, asking for a prenuptial agreement is less distasteful in a second marriage than a first one, as each person understands that they have obligations and considerable personal, separate assets. For example, the prenup can protect certain assets for each couple’s children and determine ownership of a house.
You may already have life insurance policies but you may benefit from taking out a new one and naming your new spouse as a beneficiary. When you create your new estate plan, remember to review all your insurance policies, retirement investments, and pension beneficiaries to ensure you have the correct beneficiary.
This includes any transfer-on-death assets you have, like a vehicle title or bank account. You may wish to leave these assets to your spouse and create separate protections for your children.
Long-term care planning is especially critical in second marriages. Both people are older and may be in poorer health, and if there is a significant age gap, the need for retirement planning and long-term insurance is an even more pressing consideration.
Will the couple’s combined assets be enough to pay not just for retirement but also a nursing home for one or both? What about Medicaid planning? Colorado has an option for a Medicaid trust, which can help preserve someone’s assets while still enabling them to qualify for the program. Again, an experienced estate planning attorney should set this up to ensure the trust is effective.
If you need help with fair estate planning for a second marriage, please contact Colorado Estate Matters at (303) 713-9147 for a free consultation.