Kiplinger

6 Estate-Planning Mistakes Celebrities Made

As if dying isn't bad enough, imagine your ex (your no-good, lying, cheating ex!) rolling in all the money you left behind. And, worse, your beloved family fighting it out in court to get what they can. Time to update your estate plan, right?

Indeed, outdated documents, beneficiary blunders and other estate-planning mistakes can tie your assets up in court for years, allow taxes and legal fees to eat up a chunk of your estate, and give inheritances to people you didn't have a good relationship with or hardly knew.

Making sure your estate ends up with the right people is more complicated than just drawing up a will. IRAs and 401(k) accounts, for example, have their own named beneficiaries--and will automatically pass to the designated person, regardless of what's in your will. But many people fail to update

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