Redoing will question

[folivier]

That's why we're looking at a trust to keep this from happening. We want our money to stay in our immediate family.

 

[marko]

When we updated our current wills, our 7 nieces and nephews were young children. We left a hefty equal percentage to each of them.

The idea was if one of them did not outlive us, the percentage would change and the remaining 6 would receive a larger percentage, and so on.

But now they all have children of their own and, in the above scenario, the children of the decreased niece/nephew would get nothing. With one exception, they're all quite healthy, but we do need to make a change that would reflect the need to include children of the deceased.

 

[rayvt]

The potential relative/child fighting can be mostly avoided by having a bunch of accounts and having each account have ONE primary beneficiary/TOD.


Each person gets 100% of the designated account. Contingent beneficiaries as you see fit. No room for fighting. No room for anyone to argue that they are not getting a fair portion. No room for one beneficiary to tie up accounts or real-estate by being obstinate.

You don't have to have just one large IRA, you can have several smaller IRAs. And you can adjust the sizes of the IRAs so as to adjust the percentages of your total estate each person gets.

 

[OldShooter]

The potential relative/child fighting can be mostly avoided by having a bunch of accounts and having each account have ONE primary beneficiary/TOD. Each person gets 100% of the designated account. Contingent beneficiaries as you see fit. No room for fighting. No room for anyone to argue that they are not getting a fair portion. No room for one beneficiary to tie up accounts or real-estate by being obstinate. You don't have to have just one large IRA, you can have several smaller IRAs. And you can adjust the sizes of the IRAs so as to adjust the percentages of your total estate each person gets.

Sounds like an incredibly high maintenance and somewhat inflexible solution to a problem that can be dealt with in a good estate plan. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

 

[Route246]

I knew one guy who saw this coming and inserted poison pills into his estate's will that simply said anyone who contests their inheritance payout will receive $1.00 which worked very well as none of the fighting heirs had the guts to contest their share. The guy was very smart and knew exactly how much to allocate to the known misbehaving people in the heir list and none of them contested and reluctantly took their inheritance. The leftover literally went to the local animal society. I am sure he is laughing in his grave at this one because he was surrounded by a lot of evil thinking relatives waiting for him to die.

Sorry to hear that. I have seen in other families exactly what you describe...infighting after death that tears the family apart. I wish more parents would sit their kids/beneficiaries down in a room PRIOR to their death and tell them what's coming to them and their intentions. Maybe it's not possible to do in detail as things change frequently, but at least an outline of your intentions.

 

[Dash man]

We have a poison pill in our trust, but they don’t even get a dollar.
Fortunately everyone gets along and is appreciative of what they get now and all but siblings know what they’ll get after we pass.