One surprise per week is enough — you don’t need any with Estate Planning
Now that our election is over, from the Wall Street Journal comes a story this week about a person who remarried and sought out an Estate Plan that would keep the peace between his new family and his existing family.The man has adult children from his previous marriage, who were surprised that their father was, at his age, having more children. They were not thrilled about having to share their inheritance with these “new” children, either (not to mention his younger wife’s children from her previous marriage).
The Estate itself is large, consisting mostly of real estate, stocks and bonds. The concern was how to distribute the assets reasonably. The couple decided, with their advisor, to buy insurance policies with healthy payouts for all the adult children.
The rest of the assets were placed in a trust, which would collapse when both members of the couple passed away, and whose assets would be divided among (all) the children.
Apparently everyone now gets along at Thanksgiving dinners.
This ad appeared in the Richmond News on May 17, 2013.