Getting married changes more than your relationship status. It can change your financial obligations, the rights of your spouse, the way your assets should be owned, and what happens to your property when you die.
That is particularly true when there is a prenuptial agreement involved.
A recent legal dispute involving the family of actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner is a good example. Warner died unexpectedly in July 2025 at age 54. A year later, his widow, Tenisha Warner, filed a lawsuit alleging that several financial obligations contained in their premarital agreement had not been completed before his death. Among other things, she alleges that he was required to obtain and maintain a $1 million life insurance policy for her benefit, make annual payments to her, and fund a Roth IRA on her behalf. The lawsuit remains pending, and Warner’s mother has disputed aspects of the widow’s account.
There is another detail that caught my attention as an estate planning attorney. Tenisha has said that Warner was working on a new estate plan when he died and that the existing plan dated back to 1996, when he was only 26 years old. Since then, he had married, become a father, accumulated substantially more wealth, and lived nearly three more decades of life.
We do not know what Warner intended his new plan to say, whether every allegation in the lawsuit will ultimately be proven, or what happened behind the scenes. But his family’s dispute illustrates something that applies far beyond celebrity estates: when you get married, especially when you have a prenuptial agreement, your estate plan and the rest of your financial life need to be reviewed together.
A Prenuptial Agreement and an Estate Plan Do Different Jobs
People often think of a prenuptial agreement primarily as protection in case of divorce. That is only part of what a prenup may address. Depending on its terms, it can also create important rights and obligations that continue throughout the marriage or become significant when one spouse dies.
For example, spouses might agree that certain property will remain separate, waive rights they otherwise may have in each other’s estates, require life insurance for the surviving spouse, or agree on other financial arrangements. Those provisions can directly affect estate planning.
Your trust, will, beneficiary designations, and other estate planning documents have a different job. They establish how assets should be managed during incapacity and how property should pass at death, subject to applicable law and any contractual obligations you have already made.
Problems arise when those two sets of documents are created separately and nobody goes back to make sure they agree.
Imagine that a prenuptial agreement requires one spouse to maintain life insurance for the other, but the policy was never purchased. Or the policy exists, but someone later changes the beneficiary. Perhaps the trust leaves certain property to children from a prior relationship even though the prenup gives the surviving spouse rights relating to that property.
The documents may each make perfect sense when viewed alone while creating a serious problem when they are finally read together.
Getting Married Is a Major Reason to Review an Existing Estate Plan
If you already had an estate plan before you got married, do not assume it still does what you want.
The people named in the old plan may no longer be the people you would choose today. Your assets may be completely different. You may now have children or stepchildren. You may own a home together, operate a business, have retirement accounts and insurance policies, or have very different ideas about what should happen when one of you dies.
Marriage also raises issues involving separate and community property in California. How an asset is titled, when it was acquired, how it has been handled during the marriage, and what agreements the spouses have made can all matter. A trust drafted before the marriage cannot anticipate everything that happens afterward unless it is reviewed and updated.
The Warner situation is an unusually vivid illustration. According to his widow, his existing estate plan dated from 1996, long before his marriage and the birth of his daughter. That does not automatically mean the old plan was legally defective, and we do not know all of the planning he completed later. It does show why an estate plan created for one stage of life should not simply be assumed to remain appropriate decades later.
I would give the same advice to someone whose trust is five years old if those five years included a marriage, divorce, new child, major inheritance, business sale, or other significant change. The age of the document matters less than how much your life has changed since you signed it.
Beneficiary Designations Deserve Their Own Review
One of the easiest places for an estate plan to become disconnected from reality is with beneficiary designations.
Life insurance, retirement accounts, and many other financial accounts can pass according to a beneficiary designation rather than according to the terms of your trust or will. That means updating your trust does not necessarily update everything else.
After marriage, I want to know what beneficiary designations are already in place and whether they still make sense. If a prenuptial agreement requires a particular spouse to receive life insurance, we need to confirm that the appropriate policy exists and that the beneficiary designation reflects the agreement.
The same review may be necessary after a divorce, remarriage, birth of a child, death of a beneficiary, or significant change in family circumstances.
This is one of those areas where people often have very clear intentions but incomplete implementation. You may fully intend for your spouse to receive a particular asset, but the financial institution is going to look at the documents and beneficiary designations that are actually in effect, not the plan you meant to finish someday.
A Legal Promise Is Only Useful If It Is Actually Implemented
This may be the most useful lesson from the Warner dispute.
According to Tenisha Warner’s complaint, the premarital agreement required Malcolm to purchase and maintain a $1 million life insurance policy naming her as beneficiary. She alleges that the policy was never obtained. The complaint also identifies other continuing financial obligations that she contends were not fulfilled. Those allegations have not yet been finally resolved by the court.
Whatever ultimately happened in that particular marriage, the planning principle is straightforward. Signing a document that says something should happen is not the same as making it happen.
I see the same issue in estate planning. A client signs a trust but never completes the transfers necessary to properly coordinate certain assets with the plan. Someone intends to change a beneficiary designation but does not submit the form. An insurance policy is supposed to provide liquidity for a spouse or business obligation, but nobody confirms whether the policy remains in force. A new account is opened years after the estate plan was created and never incorporated into the planning.
None of these failures usually feels dramatic when it happens. Often nothing happens at all, which is exactly why the issue is easy to overlook. The problem appears years later when someone dies or becomes incapacitated and there is no longer an opportunity to fix it.
Your Advisors Should Know About the Whole Plan
Prenuptial agreements are a particularly good example of why your professional advisors should not operate in completely separate worlds.
Your family law attorney may understand every provision of the prenup. Your estate planning attorney may know your trust inside and out. Your financial advisor knows the investment accounts, your insurance professional handles the policies, and your CPA understands the tax consequences.
The planning can still fail if nobody makes sure those pieces work together.
When I am planning for someone who has a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, I want to review it as part of the estate planning process. I need to understand what each spouse has agreed to, what rights may have been waived, what obligations remain outstanding, and whether the estate plan honors those commitments.
If the plan requires something outside my role, such as obtaining insurance or making a particular financial contribution, that does not mean I ignore it. It means we identify what needs to happen and coordinate with the appropriate advisor so that the legal plan and the financial reality match.
That type of coordination becomes even more important in a blended family, where one or both spouses may have children from prior relationships. The estate plan may need to balance providing for a surviving spouse with preserving an inheritance for children, all while respecting the terms of the couple’s marital agreement.
Do Not Wait Until Everything Is “Settled” to Update Your Planning
There is a very normal tendency to put estate planning on hold during periods of change. People tell themselves they will update the trust once they get married, after the new house closes, when the business settles down, after the baby is born, or when they finally have time to deal with everything.
Then life keeps moving.
Unexpected deaths are reminders of why that approach can be risky. Warner was only 54 when he drowned while vacationing with his family. According to his widow, he was in the process of completing a new estate plan when he died.
None of us knows when an unfinished plan will suddenly become the plan everyone has to live with.
That does not mean your estate planning has to be perfect before you sign anything. In fact, waiting for every aspect of life to become perfectly settled can be its own form of procrastination. We can create the best plan for your circumstances today and then update it when life changes.
What matters is that the plan actually gets completed and that it continues to reflect the life you are living.
When Was the Last Time Your Estate Plan and Financial Life Were Reviewed Together?
If you got married after creating your estate plan, signed a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, changed life insurance, opened new retirement or investment accounts, had children, started a business, or experienced another significant life change, it may be time to take another look.
The review should go beyond asking whether you still like the names in your trust. Your estate planning documents, beneficiary designations, asset ownership, insurance, marital agreements, and other financial arrangements should work together rather than creating competing instructions for the people who eventually have to carry them out.
This is an important part of how I approach Life & Legacy Planning®. We look at your family and financial life as a whole, create the legal planning around the life you actually have, and stay connected as circumstances change. Sometimes a review confirms that everything is working exactly as intended. Other times, we find a gap that can still be corrected while you are here to correct it.
If you have an estate plan that predates your marriage, have a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement that has never been reviewed with your estate plan, or simply are not sure whether your beneficiary designations and legal documents still work together, contact us or schedule a 15-minute introductory call. We can look at the entire picture and determine whether anything needs attention.