Estate Planning

[MAXUM]

Originally Posted by MeredithMan

We have gone through this process several times. First, it is vital that you have your docs drawn up by an estate/trust attorney specialist. If you just have a generalist or the person who did your house closing do it, you are setting yourself up for trouble. Fun fact: We did our very first wills when we got married, and naturally had our real estate closing attorney write them up. About 5 years later, we went to an estate/trust attorney to update them, and the first words out of his mouth were, "...this was done by a real estate closing guy, right?"

Also, the states that have estate taxes are getting super aggressive in trying to collect, so it is imperative that you protect your assets.

It is also super important to give a lot of forethought to your decisions as to how things will be divided. This is especially true if there is a blended family situation, or if the heirs are very different, meaning that one or more are successful and one or more are derelicts. In my family's case, my father had 3 kids from his first marriage, my mother had 2 from her first, and I was their only child between them. My parents had wills and the surviving spouse got everything. My father died first, so everything went to my mother. She re-did her will and the assets were not distributed equally among the 6 kids. She left a sizeable amount to one black sheep brother, but made me the sole trustee of his trust, to ensure that he did not blow through his money on booze and cigarettes. Although her intentions were good, it made my life miserable dealing with "my ward", as my wife called him. It also pissed off the other brothers, who couldn't understand why the black sheep got so much, but my mother's reasoning was that she was taking care of him and the others didn't need her money.

So, the moral of the story is, play out the different scenarios and think of the ramifications of your decisions on your family members before you sign the documents.

You aren't obligated to be trustee if you don't want to - this can be turned over to a third party if it becomes a complete pain. Of course there is a charge the trust will have to pay for this.