I'm not sure the OP is still checking the thread. I have had some recent experiences as the executor of my mom's estate. She left $25,000 for each of her 4 great-grandchildren (ages 17-22) to be used for their college education. The 3 kids from my niece were mostly homeschooled and they are doing fine, but the oldest just got married, and her career paths have changed several times. She is taking a couple of classes at the community college but tuition and books are less than $2,000, so it will take a long time to go through $25K at that rate.
Their new house doesn't have electricity, and in rural WY it will cost $15-20K just to hook up to the grid and they have just enough money to put up a solar panels, but not enough to afford a battery system. Getting them a Tesla Power wall or similar system is hardly an extravagant expenditure.
Meanwhile, there is my nephew's son. The marriage lasted barely a year, mom and son live in upstate NY. The rest of the family is in SoCal, Washington, or Hawaii, so we have little contact with kid. Evidently, he is a lost child, trying college twice, but didn't finish a semester. My sister, their grandmother, convinced me to let him use $10K to replace his car needed for a job.
My mom and I had a number of conversations, before her dementia, about what she want the money to go for. Was a trade school ok? Yes. Was using the money for a car Ok? Yes but only if they used the car to commute to school. At the time all of this made sense to me and I encouraged her to do it.
A year into the process, I know we made a mistake. Giving the money to the kids at age 21 or the parents would have been better. I'd like to close out the estate, one kid isn't going to use the money until graduate school so I may have to keep filing an estate tax return for the next 4 or 5 years. Now I'm doing this for free, but the OP will have to pay an executor to oversee his wishes.
I just saw this in my email this morning and looked somewhat promising for others in similar situations to the OP.
https://pages.e.northerntrust.com/w...t=Closer_Newsletter&axios_adlink=1&stream=top