After creating your estate plan, you can leave it alone for a few years. However, you cannot leave it alone indefinitely.
Though no laws exist that dictate how or when you should review your estate plan, many sources will agree on one thing: that you should do it somewhat regularly.
Reviewing regularly
The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel discusses reasons to review your estate plan. In most cases, sources agree that you should try to review your estate plan once every 3 to 5 years. You do not need to do an in-depth review at this time. It simply acts as a refresher for your memory and lets you ensure that everything written still aligns with your current desires.
You should do this even if nothing big seemingly underwent a change in this period of time. After all, something smaller but still important may have changed that you simply forgot about over the years.
When to make immediate changes
However, if your life undergoes notable changes in certain areas, you should review your plan as soon as possible with the intention of making alterations. In specific, this includes changes to your assets, your beneficiaries or your location.
Regarding assets, you should change for any major gain or loss, as well as when assets change forms such as when you buy or sell property. Regarding beneficiaries, review your plan any time you gain or lose potential beneficiaries through death, divorce, marriage or so on.
Finally, you should review your plan and the local rules regarding estates if you decide to move elsewhere. States sometimes have their own unique rules and you do not want your executor discovering that your estate plan is not valid at the last minute.