Taxation & Estate Planning

Cutting Off Fights Over Your Estate

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

Is there a parent alive who WANTS his children to fight over his estate? I hope not.

But what can you do to avoid fighting? Well, one thing you can do is to disclose your plans, by handing out copies of your estate planning documents to your children. The problem with this approach is that you may wish to change your documents in the future. Also, some folks like to maintain a little privacy.

Another approach is a letter to your children, touching on "hot button" issues and telling how they should be resolved. The "hot button" issues may not include how your estate or trust is to be distributed (usually there will be an equal distribution anyway). Rather, it could touch on things like:

-how you want your executor or trustee to be compensated OR

-how your personal property should be divided.

These are things that can take up a lot of space in an estate planning document, but they seem perfectly appropriate issues to raise in a letter that starts, "here's how I feel about the following."

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on October 01, 2008 (boomark / email).