Estate planning is serious family business with serious future repercussions, regardless if the family is a unit of two married spouses or a single-parent household. The complexity of planning and the issues involving guardianship, conservatorship, and caring for a spouse are further complicated with a second marriage.
Before discussing the implications of a second marriage on an estate plan, it’s important that folks understand that any change in marital status affects any previously established estate plan. Under Ohio law, a surviving spouse inherits everything in situations where the decedent spouse did not leave a will (known as intestate) and there are no children. The divorce of spouses does not carry that automatic inheritance with the departing spouse.