What Happens to an Old Will When You Remarry in Georgia
Your will does not become invalid just because you remarried. Georgia has no rule that cancels a will the moment you sign a new marriage license. If your old will was properly signed and witnessed, it is still valid today.
But “still valid” is not the same as “still does what you want.” Georgia has a law for this exact situation. It is O.C.G.A. § 53-4-48. People call it the pretermitted spouse law. Say your will was signed before your current marriage. Say it was not written with that marriage in mind. Then your new spouse gets treated as if you left them out on purpose. Georgia law steps in and gives your new spouse a share of your estate, even though your will never mentions them.
Why Your Will Still Works But May Not Protect You
This is the part that surprises most people. The law does not throw out your will. It does not let your new spouse take your whole estate either. It carves out one piece for your new spouse. That piece gets paid first, before the rest of your will is followed.
That carved-out share is the same amount your spouse would get if you died with no will at all. Georgia’s default rule gives a spouse at least one-third of the estate when you have surviving children. It can be more. If you already left your new spouse a gift in your will, that gift counts toward this share. It does not stack on top of it.
Here is where it hits blended families hardest. This share comes out of your estate before your other gifts are paid in full. Say your will leaves everything to your kids from a first marriage. Your new spouse’s share still reduces what is actually left for them, even though your will never planned for that.
A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can waive this automatic share in advance, if both spouses sign one with full financial disclosure. That protects your kids without leaving anything to a default legal rule. It does not help after the fact. It only works if it is signed before the automatic share ever becomes a question.
What Happens to an Old Trust When You Remarry in Georgia
A revocable living trust works differently. Georgia’s pretermitted spouse law only touches a will. It has no matching rule for a trust. Remarrying does not trigger any automatic share inside an old trust. It does not add or remove anyone either.
That might sound safer. It actually creates a different problem. An old trust just keeps doing exactly what it says, even after your life has changed. Say it names an ex-spouse as a beneficiary or successor trustee. That person can still be in line for those roles. Say it was written before your current spouse existed. Your current spouse may not be named anywhere in it at all.
A trust also does not work alone. It usually sits next to a pour-over will, a power of attorney, an advance healthcare directive, and beneficiary forms on your accounts and life insurance. Any one of those can still point at a prior spouse or a prior family, no matter how current the rest of your life is.
A stale trust is not the only way a first-marriage family gets squeezed out of a second-marriage estate. Does Your Spouse Inherit Everything With Kids From a Prior Marriage? covers what happens with no updated plan in place at all.
Will vs. Trust: Two Different Remarriage Problems
These are not the same risk. They do not have the same fix either. Georgia law creates one specific problem for an old will. An old trust has no matching law, but it carries its own quiet risk instead.
| Document |
Does remarriage change it automatically? |
The real risk |
| An old will |
No, but O.C.G.A. § 53-4-48 can still carve out a share for your new spouse |
Your new spouse’s share can reduce what your will actually leaves your kids |
| An old trust |
No, and there is no similar law that steps in |
It keeps naming an ex-spouse, or never names your current spouse, exactly as written |
Neither document fixes itself. A will has a legal patch built in. That patch can still take from your kids. A trust has no legal patch at all. It just carries an old plan forward, untouched.
An unupdated will is not the only Georgia law that can cut into what your kids inherit in a second marriage. What Is Georgia’s Year’s Support Law and How Does It Affect a Second Marriage covers a related risk with the exact same result.
Common Remarriage Mistakes We See in Georgia Blended Families
A few beliefs feel true. They are not. Here is what we hear most often from blended families in Georgia:
- “My will already protects my new spouse because I love them.” Georgia law does not read your intentions. Without a real provision naming your new spouse, the automatic share is the only protection they get. That comes at your kids’ expense, not from a clean, planned gift.
- “I don’t need to touch my trust because my will already handles remarriage.” A trust and a will are two separate documents. Updating one does not update the other. An old trust keeps naming whoever it named when you signed it.
- “My ex is still listed as trustee, but they’d never actually act on it.” Whether they would or not is not the legal question. Until the trust is amended, they still hold that legal authority on paper.
- “We’re newly married, so there’s no rush.” The pretermitted spouse share applies the moment you remarry. It does not wait. If something happens before you update your plan, Georgia’s default rule is already in effect.
What to Do About an Old Will or Trust After Remarriage
What you need next depends on what you already have.
Say you only have an old will and no trust. The safer move is usually a trust-based plan that names your new spouse and your kids from a prior marriage directly, instead of leaving it to a law to sort out. The $5,500 Family tier is built for exactly this. It fits a household where a spouse and kids need to be named separately. It includes a revocable living trust, a pour-over will, a power of attorney, and a healthcare directive.
If your estate is simpler, the $3,500 Foundation tier covers the same core documents at a smaller scope. See the full breakdown of every package tier to compare.
Say you already have a trust from before this marriage. You likely do not need to start over. A $1,050 Trust Package Review checks whether your existing trust still protects both your current spouse and your kids from a prior marriage. It flags anything that still points at an old situation, like a former spouse named as trustee or a beneficiary form nobody ever updated.
Either path starts the same way. Estate Planning Costs for Blended Families With Kids in Georgia breaks down what each tier includes.
How to Update Your Plan After Remarriage
None of this requires guessing which document is the problem. It requires having both checked by someone who knows what to look for.
Your first call is free, about 15 minutes, and happens by phone with Shawn. If you move forward, your next step is the Design Meeting with Melissa, which is credited toward your plan.
