My Parents Live in Another State. How Do I Make Sure Their Estate Plan Actually Works?

A lot of families are spread across state lines. Parents retire to Florida or the Carolinas. Children stay in New Jersey or New York. Life gets busy, and the estate plan that was put together years ago — if one exists at all — reflects a version of the family’s situation that may no longer be accurate. When something happens, the distance that felt manageable suddenly becomes a logistical and legal problem at the worst possible moment.

The good news is that most of these problems are preventable. The challenge is knowing which ones to look for before they arrive.

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The First Question: Where Does Your Parent Actually Live Now?

This sounds obvious, but it is the most important question in multistate estate planning and the one families most often skip. A person’s legal domicile — the state they consider their permanent home — determines which state’s laws govern their will, which court handles their probate, and how their estate is taxed at death.

If your parent moved from New Jersey to Florida five years ago but never updated their estate plan, their documents may still reflect New Jersey assumptions. Their will may reference New Jersey law. Their power of attorney may have been drafted under New Jersey execution requirements. Their healthcare proxy may use New Jersey-specific language. None of this necessarily makes those documents invalid in their new state, but it creates ambiguity — and ambiguity in estate documents tends to surface at the worst possible time.

The starting point is a review of all existing documents against the laws of the state where your parent now lives. An attorney in that state is the right person to do that review.

Will Documents from One State Work in Another?

Generally, yes — with important caveats.

Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution, a will that is validly executed in one state should be accepted as valid in another. If your parent’s will was properly signed and witnessed in New Jersey and they have since moved to Arizona, Arizona courts will generally honor it. The same broad principle applies to powers of attorney and healthcare proxies — documents properly executed in one state are typically recognized in other states, provided they do not conflict with the laws of the receiving state.

But general validity is not the same as optimal function. Some states have their own specific requirements for healthcare directives that can cause friction when an out-of-state document is presented to a hospital or care facility. Some financial institutions are more cautious about accepting powers of attorney that were drafted under another state’s statutes. And some states have Medicaid planning rules, inheritance tax structures, or homestead exemptions that vary significantly from the state where the documents were prepared.

Having documents that technically work is not the same as having documents that work smoothly and accomplish everything your parent intended. When a parent moves states, a document review — and often a document refresh — is worth the investment.

Real Estate in a Different State Is Its Own Problem

This is the most common and most underestimated complication in multistate estate planning. When a person dies owning real estate, that property is governed by the laws of the state where it is located — not the state where the person lived.

If your parent lives in Florida but owns a vacation home in New Jersey, their Florida probate handles everything in Florida. But the New Jersey property requires a separate legal process in New Jersey. This is called ancillary probate, and it means opening a second estate proceeding in a second state, hiring an attorney in that state, paying additional court fees, and managing two parallel processes while grieving.

The same is true in reverse. If your parent moved from New Jersey to another state but still owns the family home here, that property cannot be transferred through the other state’s probate alone. New Jersey has jurisdiction over New Jersey real estate, period.

Ancillary probate is avoidable. Transferring real estate into a trust during your parent’s lifetime removes it from the probate estate entirely. When the trust owns the property, the trustee can manage and transfer it at death without any court involvement in any state. A trust is the cleanest solution to the multistate real estate problem, and it is one of the strongest arguments for having an updated estate plan that was drafted with the parent’s current situation in mind.

What the Adult Child in New Jersey Needs to Have in Place

Multistate planning is not just about what your parent has in their home state. It is also about what you have in yours.

If your parent named you as their agent under a power of attorney or as their healthcare proxy, those documents give you authority in their state and generally in yours as well. But if something happens to you — if you are incapacitated, unavailable, or simply unable to travel quickly — there should be a backup agent named in the document who can step in.

More practically, if you are serving as executor of a parent’s out-of-state estate, you may need to hire an attorney in that state to handle the primary probate. You will also need to understand which assets are in play and where they are located. Bank accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, and investment accounts with named beneficiaries transfer without probate regardless of state. Real estate does not. Knowing the inventory before a crisis makes every step after it more manageable.

It is also worth making sure your own estate plan is current. If your parent has named you as a beneficiary, and something happens to both of you in close succession, the question of where those assets land becomes complicated quickly without a plan that accounts for it.

The Conversation Worth Having Now

Most families avoid this conversation because it feels like planning for death. It is actually planning for life — for the period when a parent is aging, when decisions need to be made, when someone needs legal authority to act, and when the distance between states is not just geography but a gap in legal protection.

The questions worth asking are straightforward. Does your parent have a current will, power of attorney, and healthcare proxy? Were those documents drafted after the move, or do they reflect a prior state of residence? Does your parent own real estate in more than one state, and if so, is that property in a trust? Who is named as the agent, executor, and trustee — and do those people still make sense given where everyone lives now?

None of these questions require a crisis to answer. They require a conversation and, in most cases, a single appointment with the right attorney.

Plan Well. Live Better.

Distance does not have to mean exposure. At Milvidskiy Law Group, we help New Jersey and New York families coordinate estate planning across state lines — whether that means reviewing documents your parent brought from another state, helping you understand your role as an out-of-state executor, or making sure your own plan reflects the full picture of your family. Learn more about our estate planning services or explore how we approach elder law planning for families navigating complex situations.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Estate planning and elder law are highly individual — what is right for one family may not be right for another. We encourage you to speak with a qualified attorney to discuss your specific situation.