Do You Need an Estate Plan If You Just Got Married in New Jersey or New York?

Getting married changes almost everything about your legal and financial life. What most newlyweds don’t realize is that the law in New Jersey and New York has already made a number of decisions on your behalf, and some of those decisions may not be the ones you would have chosen.

Marriage triggers a set of default legal rules that govern what happens to your assets, your medical care, and your money if something goes wrong. An estate plan is how you replace those defaults with your own intentions.

What you’ll learn in this article:

• What New Jersey and New York law automatically assumes about your marriage, and where those assumptions fall short
• Which documents every newly married couple needs and why each one matters
• How the two states differ in ways that affect your planning
• Why the window right after marriage is the best time to get this done

Marriage Changes Your Legal Standing — With or Without a Plan

The moment you marry, both New Jersey and New York law recognize your spouse as a central figure in your estate. That recognition comes with real legal weight, but it does not automatically put the right protections in place.

In New Jersey, a surviving spouse has the right to claim one-third of a deceased spouse’s estate regardless of what a will says. This is called the elective share. It applies to individually owned property and most assets with beneficiary designations, including bank accounts, retirement accounts, and life insurance. The practical implication: a spouse cannot be fully disinherited without a prenuptial or post-marital agreement in which both parties explicitly waive that right.

New York operates similarly. The state’s spousal right of election entitles a surviving spouse to the greater of $50,000 or one-third of the net estate. If you die without a will in New York, the state’s intestate succession laws take over entirely and determine who gets what — a process that may or may not reflect what you actually wanted.

Neither state’s default rules are necessarily wrong. But they are generic, written for the average situation, and your situation is not average. The purpose of an estate plan is to move from the state’s version of your marriage to your own.

What Newly Married Couples in NJ and NY Actually Need

An estate plan for newlyweds is not a single document. It is a coordinated set of legal instruments, each addressing a different category of risk.

A will. This is the foundation. Without one, the state decides who receives your assets, who administers your estate, and, if children are involved, who may raise them. Only 24 percent of Americans currently have a will, according to 2025 survey data — a figure that has declined steadily from 40 percent in 2016. A will does not have to be complicated, but it does have to exist.

Beneficiary designations. Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and bank accounts with payable-on-death designations pass outside of your will entirely. They go directly to whoever is named. If you married last spring and your 401(k) still names a parent or a sibling as beneficiary, that is who receives it — regardless of what your will says. Updating these designations is one of the most important and most overlooked steps after marriage.

A durable power of attorney. This document names someone to manage your financial affairs if you are incapacitated. Without it, your spouse may need to go to court to obtain that authority, even in a medical emergency.

A healthcare proxy and advance directive. Your spouse has no automatic legal authority to make medical decisions for you without a healthcare proxy in place. An advance directive records your preferences for end-of-life care so those decisions do not fall entirely to others under pressure.

Together, these four instruments cover the most likely scenarios a married couple will face. None of them require a large estate to be worth having.

Where New Jersey and New York Diverge

The two states share a general framework but differ in ways that matter for planning.

New Jersey repealed its estate tax in 2018, so estates in New Jersey are not subject to a state-level estate tax regardless of size. New Jersey does, however, still impose an inheritance tax on transfers to certain beneficiaries. Spouses are fully exempt, as are children and direct descendants. Siblings face rates between 11 and 16 percent on transfers above $25,000. More distant relatives and non-family beneficiaries face rates between 15 and 16 percent with no exemption. If you have people in your life you want to provide for who fall outside that exemption, this is worth planning around.

New York takes a different approach. The state imposes an estate tax with a 2025 exemption of $7.16 million per person. What makes New York’s system distinctive is a feature attorneys refer to as the “cliff.” If an estate exceeds 105 percent of the exemption threshold, the entire estate becomes taxable from the first dollar, not just the amount above the limit. New York also does not allow portability of its estate tax exemption between spouses, which is a meaningful difference from federal law. A credit shelter trust, also called a bypass trust, is a common tool for preserving both spouses’ exemptions and preventing a wasted exemption at the first death.

These distinctions are not abstract. For couples with real estate, retirement accounts, and accumulated savings, they translate into concrete planning decisions.

The Beneficiary Designation Problem Nobody Talks About

Of all the things that go wrong in newly married couples’ financial lives, outdated beneficiary designations may be the most common and the most consequential.

A beneficiary designation overrides a will. Full stop. If your IRA names your mother, your mother receives that account when you die — even if your will leaves everything to your spouse, and even if your marriage was warm and your intentions were clear. Courts have consistently upheld beneficiary designations over contrary will language because they are separate legal instruments, not subject to probate.

The same logic applies to life insurance, 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, annuities, and accounts with transfer-on-death designations. Each of these needs to be reviewed and updated after marriage. For couples where one or both spouses have accounts from a previous relationship, employer, or decade-old job, this review is not optional — it is urgent.

Why the Time Right After Marriage Is the Right Time to Plan

There is a version of this conversation that happens under pressure — after a diagnosis, after an accident, after one spouse receives unexpected news and the other realizes nothing is in writing. That version is harder, more expensive, and more emotionally fraught than the conversation that happens in a calm moment.

The first year of marriage is when the legal landscape is freshest. Assets are being combined, accounts are being opened, homes are being purchased. The decisions being made right now will shape the financial structure of the marriage for decades. Building an estate plan into that process, rather than treating it as something to get to eventually, is the most efficient way to make sure the structure reflects what the couple actually wants.

This is especially true for couples with prior marriages, children from previous relationships, business interests, or significant assets brought into the marriage. Each of those factors adds complexity that default state rules were not designed to handle.

Plan Well. Live Better.

The question isn’t really whether you need an estate plan after getting married — it’s what you’re leaving to chance if you don’t have one. Milvidskiy Law Group works with newly married couples across New Jersey and New York to put the right documents in place from the start: wills, powers of attorney, healthcare proxies, and the beneficiary review that ties it all together. Building a life together is the easy part. Making sure the law reflects it is what we’re here for.

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.