Any time you are doing Estate Planning for Blended Families, it is always a balancing act. You have to balance the couple’s desire to take care of each other vs. their desire to take care of their children from their previous marriage. As usual, a Revocable Living Trust is the best foundational Estate Planning tool. Here you can plan for mental disability, avoid the cost, delay, and publicity of Probate Court, take care of the surviving spouse in the event of a lawsuit or remarriage, do Estate Tax Planning, and provide for the protection of the children, possibly on a multigenerational level down to the grandchildren and beyond in the event of squander, divorce, or a lawsuit. This is only if the Revocable Living Trust is properly designed by an experienced Estate Planning lawyer and all the appropriate assets are titled in the name of your Revocable Living Trust.
For the Blended Family, you have the issues of who remains in the residence when one of the couple is either in a nursing care facility or passes on. You also have the issues of the use of the contents of the house (the furniture, etc.). Do you make that available for the surviving spouse, or do all the furnishing and personal effects of the deceased spouse move out to their adult children when they pass on leaving the surviving spouse behind?
You’ll also have issues such as if the house is owned by one spouse who passes first, do you allow the surviving spouse to continue to reside in the residence until they pass on? Until they remarry? Until they have a new live-in partner? Do you fund the maintenance, taxes, and repair of that residence while the surviving spouse remains in the residence? These are all issues to be discussed with the client and all are very personal issues for the clients to decide.
Any Blended Family is a total balancing act. How the items are balanced on each side of the column is totally up to each and every client. Each and every client is different and each and every family is different. Therefore, each and every Estate Plan must be different and customized to the client. You can only know how to properly design a plan only if you ask the right questions at the right time.
At the Law Firm of Steven Andrew Jackson, Attorney and Counsellor at Law, we have helped hundreds of families protect themselves and their loved ones, avoid Estate Taxes and Probate Costs, and keep their Estate Plans current with the law through The Customized Protective Estate Planning Solution™.