After months of near confinement in our homes, many of us are stir-crazy and eager to travel to a vacation destination. Although more states are opening up, there are several precautions to consider and preparations to make as you plan your summer travels.

Heed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. The CDC has issued a number of Read more . . .

Parents who develop an estate plan often do so to provide for their heirs financially. Many want to make sure hard-earned assets, family heirlooms, or closely held businesses stay within the family. Indeed, a common question is what cost effective options are available to protect one’s children’s inheritance from a spouse in the event of untrustworthiness or divorce. Thankfully, there are many ways to structure your child’s inheritance to help ensure it will remain in the family for future generations. Let’s look at a few of the options now.
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When you hear the phrase “estate plan,” you might first think about paperwork. Or your mind might land on some of the uncomfortable topics that estate planning confronts head-on: end-of-life decisions, incapacity, and your family’s legacy from generation to generation. Those subjects hit home for everyone.  But while that could feel like a reason to avoid estate planning, the emotional nature of these decisions is actually a reason to embrace the process with enthusiasm. Here are a few ways in which emotion in estate planning is a good thing: 

1.

Many people put their estate plan on their to-do list as a one-time project: “Create estate plan” or “Meeting with lawyer 10:30 a.m. Thursday for estate plan.”

Thinking of your estate plan as a single project or task to complete and move off your list is a common approach – but it’s also an approach that can land you in considerable hot water. Here’s why it’s essential to view your estate plan as a process, rather than a project.

Congratulations are in order—you have accumulated enough wealth to be concerned about eventually passing it along to your children and grandchildren in a manner that will encourage them to lead positive and productive lives.  Like many, your objective is to allow your children to enjoy the rewards of wealth without becoming irresponsible, overindulgent or feeling entitled to anything money can buy.

When it comes to sharing one’s wealth with adult children, there are some general principles that may help you guide your children as they shape their values.  Two quotes about sharing wealth with children are an excellent starting point:

I wanted my children to have “enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.” – Warren Buffett

“It’s better to give with warm hands than with cold ones.” – Unknown

Establish Inter Vivos Trusts for Your Children, And Use Restrictions Creatively

You can establish inter vivos trusts (trusts that go into effect during your lifetime) and appoint professional trustees during your lifetime.  Consider some combination of the following restrictions on the trust funds to help your children develop into competent, capable adults:

• Make receipt of funds dependent on employment
• Use trust funds to match income from employment
• Prohibit distribution of trust earnings until the child reaches a certain age (it is not unheard of to distribute trust earnings to children once they reach age 65)
• Make attaining a certain level of education a prerequisite to distribution of trust income
• Consider establishing a charitable trust or family foundation, with room for employment of your adult child in the foundation’s management

Consider a generation-skipping trust, so that your wealth is shared directly with grandchildren

Make Gifts or Loans During Your Lifetime—And Not Just Gifts of Money

This is the meaning behind the quotation above regarding warm hands and cold ones.  It is better, in so many ways, to give gifts during your lifetime rather than after your death.  In addition to gifts, consider making strategic, interest-free loans to your children to help them achieve certain goals without losing a lot of their own income to interest payments:

• Interest-free loans for higher education
• Interest-free loans for private education for grandchildren
• Interest-free loans for home purchases

In addition to giving gifts of money or making strategic loans, there are other “gifts” you can give your children to help them learn to live with wealth.  Consider the following suggestions,:

• Hire a professional to teach your children how to manage their money, instead of banking on your children listening to your own lessons.
• Pay for family vacations that serve a philanthropic purpose, such as travel to Africa to deliver medical equipment to a remote town or travel to South America to help clean a national park.
• Begin or continue a family tradition of local volunteer work with disadvantaged people in your own community to ensure that your children get firsthand knowledge of how fortunate they are to have the resources your family has accrued.

In general, experts agree that families fare better when their wealth is used to enrich their lives and to help others less fortunate.  Give your children opportunities to learn to use money in responsible ways, from as early in their lives as possible.  Show them the difference between buying a new sports car and donating the same amount of money to a program that sends food to people in need.  That isn’t to say a new sports car shouldn’t be on the shopping list – but perhaps it shouldn’t be the only thing on the shopping list.

If you have a child who is addicted to drugs or alcohol, or who is financially irresponsible, you already know the heartbreak associated with trying to help that child make healthy decisions.  Perhaps your other adult children are living independent lives, but this child still turns to you to bail him out – either figuratively or literally – of trouble.

If these are your circumstances, you are probably already worrying about how to continue to help your child once you are gone.  You predict that your child will misuse any lump sum of money left to him or her via your will.  You don’t want to completely cut this child out of your estate plan, but at the same time, you don’t want to enable destructive behavior or throw good money after bad.

Trusts are an estate planning tool you can use to provide an inheritance to a worrisome heir while maintaining control over how, when, where, and why the heir accesses the funds.  This type of trust is sometimes called a spendthrift trust.  

As with all trusts, you designate a trustee who controls the funds that will be left to the heir.  This trustee can be an independent third party (there are companies that specialize in this type of work) or a member of the family.  It is often wise to opt for a third party as a trustee, to prevent accusations among family members about favoritism.

The trust can specify the exact circumstances under which money will be disbursed to the heir.  Or, more simply, the trust can specify that the trustee has complete and sole discretion to disburse funds when the heir applies for money.  Most parents in these circumstances discover that they wish to impose their own incentives and restrictions, rather than rely on the judgment of an unknown third party.

The types of conditions or incentives that can be used with a trust include:

• Drug or alcohol testing before funds are released
• Payments directly to landlords, colleges, etc., rather than payment to the heir
• Disbursement of a specified lump sum if the heir graduates from university or keeps the same job for a certain time period
• Payment only to a drug or alcohol rehab center if the child is in an active period of addiction
• Disbursement of a lump sum if the child remains drug free
• Payments that match the child’s earned income

If you are considering writing this type of complex trust, it is advisable to seek assistance from a qualified and experienced estate planning attorney who can help you devise a plan that best accomplishes your wishes with respect to your child.
 

The role of an Personal Representative (or an Executor) is to effectuate a deceased person’s wishes as declared in a will after he or she has passed on. The Personal Representative’s responsibilities include the distribution of assets according to the will, the maintenance of assets until the will is settled, and the paying of estate bills and debts. An old joke says that you should choose an enemy to perform the task because it is such a thankless job, even though the Personal Representative may take a percentage of the estate’s assets as a fee. The following issues should be considered when choosing an Personal Representative for one's estate.

Competency: The Personal Representative of an estate will be going through financial and legal documents and transferring documents from the testator to the beneficiaries.
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The conversation about a person’s last wishes can be an awkward one for both the individual who is the topic of conversation and his or her loved ones. The end of someone’s life is not a topic anyone looks forward to discussing. It is, however, an important conversation that must be had so that the family understands  the testator’s final wishes before he or she passes away. If a significant sum is being left to someone or some entity outside of the family, an explanation of this action may go a long way to avoiding a contested will. In a similar vein, if one heir is receiving a larger share of the estate than the others, it is prudent to have this action explained. If funds are being placed in a trust instead of given directly to the heirs, it makes sense for the testator to advise his or her loved ones in advance.

When a loved one dies, people are often in a state of emotional turmoil. Each deals with grief differently and, often, unpredictably. Anger is a common reaction to loss, one of the five stages postulated to apply to everyone dealing with such a tragedy. Simply by talking to loved ones ahead of time, a testator can preempt any anger misdirected at the estate plan and avoid an unnecessary dispute, be it a small family tiff or a prolonged legal battle.

The Personal Representative must be privy to a significant amount of information before a testator passes on. It is helpful for the Personal Representative to know that he or she has been chosen for this role  and to have accepted the appointment in advance. The Personal Representative should know the location of the original will. Concerns of fraud mean that only the original copy of a will can be entered into probate. The Personal Representative should be aware of all bank accounts, assets, and debts in a testator’s name. This will avoid a tedious search for documents after the decedent passes on and will ensure that all assets are included as part of the estate. The Personal Representative of an estate should be aware of all memberships, because it will be the Personal Representative’s responsibility to cancel them. An up-to-date accounting of all assets and debts will simplify the settlement of the estate for a Personal Representative significantly.