The duh was in reference to my poor communication. Ooops! But you point is well made, especially if you have children. Another use for a bypass trust.
Question on your estate planning approach
- Thread starter Gekko
- Start date
The duh was in reference to my poor communication. Ooops! But you point is well made, especially if you have children. Another use for a bypass trust.
youbet
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
DW and I were even thinking in terms of smaller things. Perhaps take 90% of the assets and apply the usual estate planning tools to protect ourselves, our son, the grandkids, etc. Then take 10% and apply it to personal whims: alma maters, friends, charities, etc. The 10% (5% each) would pass directly at the time of either death.
Our reasoning is that there are some small things we'd like done fairly immediately at the time of our passing and not have wait until the second shoe falls, perhaps (and hopefully) many years later.
Of course, as close friends have suggested, why not just do those things now while we're alive? And that's a good point. Someone already mentioned establishing a charitable trust. Time to do some reading up......
calmloki
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Re: this very thing: watching with a certain dispassionate interest the way my honey's mother's estate plays out. My gal's Mom remarried a great guy about 30 years ago. Both Mom and new-Dad each have two adult children and set up an A-B trust. Intent was that should either Mom or Dad die first, survivor would have the entire estate to do with as they wished, using it to provide for the survivor till their death. Ok, that's well and good and smart. New-Dad checked out about 3 years ago.
The two sets of adult kids are pretty much good with one another, and my gal is co-executor of the trust after Mom's death with the more reasonable new-Dad's kid. The interesting thing is watching my gal's Mom depleting the estate to the benefit of her kids (primarily my gals sibling because she needs more). She has the right to do so, but i'm just guessing that whenever Mom dies the more needy child of new-Dad is not going to be a happy camper if it's real obvious that Mom shifted the bulk of the estate to her kids.
Lessons: Moms care for their own first. Couples should provide for each other, but consider making seperate bequests to those they really care for, regardless of how fairly they think their surviving parter will act.
old woman
Full time employment: Posting here.
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Mom is 81 and her boyfriend is 75 they have been dating about 15 years and have talked marriage. He has an adult son, she has three adult children. If they married they would sell one or both houses and live together but what happens when they die? If they leave everything to each other and died in the same accident but one a minute before the other all the money would go to the second children. I would hate to see the money my dad and mom earned go to his son. I have only seen his son once about 10 years ago so don't have any feelings about him but I could see mom wanting to take care of her boyfriend after she was gone. If he sold his house and moved into hers then it was left to us we would need to evict him to get our inheritance that would be hard we don't dislike him.
W2R
Moderator Emeritus
After my father died in 1982, my mother had a twenty year committed relationship with a wonderful man. She was aged 73 to 93, and I guess her boyfriend was about aged 70-90 (when he died as well). They never married because of the confusion this would bring to their estates (which were already pretty complicated). They had apartments in an assisted living facility that were right down the hall from one another, and enjoyed each others' company a lot.
