Late marriage threatens inheritance. Spouse can erase you.

This is where your parent has remarried late in life and the person you should be worried about is not a stranger, it's that new spouse. There's a legal move they can make that erases you and your siblings completely. And most families don't find out until the funeral is over and the money's already gone. Why a late-in-life marriage is the biggest threat to an inheritance. The legal reality is a spousal elective share. A spouse is often legally entitled to a large slice no matter what the will says. The red flag is are there beneficiary changes on life insurance, on retirement accounts, are there TOD or transfer on death established on bank accounts? Also, the deed to the house. See if the house is quietly retitled into joint ownership so it never enters the estate. We have a real case we're working on right now where a family that had their childhood house lost through retitling even before their last surviving parent died. The house was retitled, the surviving parent signed over the house to the new spouse. They made an excuse of for your protection to make sure that nobody takes it and I'll take care of it in the will. But then that legal move retitled that house outside the estate even though the will said all real estate goes to the children. That real estate was no longer the estate and the new spouse was the threat.