Should each child get an equal share? Does your estate plan provide for equal or equitable distributions? (They are not necessarily the same.)
Have you thought through the right way and the wrong way of leaving money and property to your children? Estate planning should deal with relationships as well as $ dollars.
Do you believe that you must automatically divide your property equally among your children? There may be good reasons to divide the property unequally.
Some families face interesting situations:
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Don’t keep your estate plans a secret. Surprising your heirs can backfire. Take the time to discuss your plans and reasons with your family.
How can you make sure your estate plan addresses your wishes and doesn’t cause hard feelings and disagreements among your heirs?
The simplest answer is…communicate in advance. The thought of a family meeting to discuss your will may be unpleasant, but if you don’t share your feelings now, they may be inheriting turmoil. An important part of estate planning is figuring out what money and material possessions mean to you and your children and what their expectations are. Open communication about your will gives you the ability to explain any apparent inequalities and give your children a chance to express their thoughts and feelings and establish a plan that is really “fair to all.”
Communicate now to avoid putting someone in the embarrassing position of trying to explain your actions after you are gone. Don’t leave your family confused, unprepared and destined for resentment. Family members will embrace an estate plan they were involved in creating. Wealth should be the glue that binds the family together, not the dynamite that blows it apart.
Passing money and property to children means different things to different parents. It’s important for you to realize that talking openly with your adult children doesn’t mean that they have the right to dictate what you do. Your assets are from a lifetime of hard work and dedication and you must decide how to disperse them, but open discussion with family will help you to decide in a more informed and sensitive manner.
Don’t disinherit if you can possibly avoid it. Even when a child is a miserable rotten disgrace to the family, it may not make sense to cut them out of the will completely. It is wiser to leave that child a token amount. Future generations won’t have to deal with the bitterness.
Estate planning is a process, not a one time event. Review your will regularly, about every two years. Family situations change and your will needs to reflect these changes.
The simplest advice for you when preparing your will is communicate, communicate, communicate.
What Do You Fear?
What do you fear, and why? Is it holding you back from realizing your full potential?
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I agree with you, Kelly; I found this article extremely judgmental in tone, and I could not help but think of the parable of the prodigal son. The father in that story did not judge his son’s desire to take his share of his inheritance, despite the fact that the way in which he spent it was not wise, and when the son returned home broke, the father greeted him with the same love he felt for him before he had ever left. The only hard feelings were from the other son, who had harshly judged his brother because he thought he “should” have behaved differently, and he also resented not getting the attention and party from his father that was now being thrown for him. Partiality and envy are not attitudes encouraged by Jesus, who says in Matthew 23:8:
“‘Don’t let anyone call you “Rabbi,” for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.’”
This article made me sick to my stomach. I can’t believe that parents would be so judgmental of their children even after death. It seems just like one pathetic last ditch attempt to control their adult children who have chosen to live their life in a way that the parents don’t approve of.
“Tim and his brother Brian have contributed greatly to the success of their parents’ business while their two sisters moved out of the area years ago and only come home for visits.”
What if the two sisters had promising careers or life prospects somewhere outside of the area and went to pursue their own dreams? Should they really be punished because they didn’t go into the family business?
“Jack and Mabel are very worried about giving a large sum of money to their daughter Amber as part of her inheritance because of her history of making poor choices when it comes to marriage partners. They don’t want all their hard work to go down the drain at the hands of someone they don’t know or approve of.”
How condescending and horrible that sounds! She’s not a teenager running off with the school bad-boy on his motorcycle, she is a grown woman so she has the right to choose who she marries. If you are really worried, such as if she is in an abusive relationship, why not try to talk to her in a non-judgmental way and give her the support and encouragement that she needs to leave him? Why not do this before you die, rather than being snobby and saying “well, we don’t want to support our daughter because we don’t like her husband.”
It should be said that children should never count on an inheritance, and that they should be independent and build their own stable lifestyle. An inheritance should not be something that is relied on, but it should be a way of passing on the worldly possessions of someone who passes away into the care of someone they love. I hope anyone who is a “wayward” child like in one of your examples has built their own wealth and independence so that they don’t need the inheritance that their spiteful parents have withheld from them.
When I have children, I will never make my inheritance conditional on my adult children living a certain way. I hope that I am able to love my children for who they are and not judge them for the choices that they make.