Unfortunately,
estate planning can cause family feuds over inheritance, often leading to
litigation that can become lengthy and costly with no clear winner. From our
experience, family litigation occurs not from a lack of trying to solve the
issue, but from a lack of planning.
Planning for your estate
translates to planning for your family.
Or is it planning for your family?
Well, it really means both –
“planning for your family”
(i.e., ensuring your family’s well-being financially) and, more subtly
“planning for your family”
(i.e., ensuring your family’s well-being relationally).
You see, family infighting is a
very real and present danger, even within families that are otherwise loving
and respectful. Death and the resulting inheritance are fraught with emotional
danger. How do you plan to avoid the family feud?
Families are simply too complex
to offer any silver bullet suggestions (each family is the sum total of each
family member’s hopes, dreams, anxieties, and often petty obsessions). However, estate planning attorneys have ways
to prevent estate litigation.
Each attorney may have his or
her own choice list of tactics. However, WealthManagement.com
published a list worth consideration in an article titled “Avoiding Family Conflicts During Estate
Planning.”
The original article is worth
reading, but here is the list of bullet points in summary:
- Overcome the Concept of Fairness
- Transfer Assets Based on a Natural Flow
- Protect Family Assets
- Make Major Decisions with Every Family Member in
the Room - Do Not Wait for the Original
Founder of the Family Business, or a Parent, to Pass Away - Evaluate What You Can and Can’t
Afford to Transfer - Treat Estate Planning as an
Ongoing Process - Pick the Right Professional
Advisor
It’s worth reading through the
list and a few more like it.
What does your family need and
how will you plan “for your
family” to head off squabbles, infighting, or outright litigation?
Please
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The archive on our website contains numerous blog posts on these legal
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Reference: WealthManagement.com
(May 15, 2013) “Avoiding Family Conflicts During Estate
Planning”