Protect Your Family. Become Part of Ours
Estate Planning – Trust Litigation – Inheritance Disputes – Product Liability – Probate & Business – Trust Administration – Tax Planning
Estate planning for an irresponsible child requires careful consideration for your child’s financial future balanced with the need for responsible handling of assets. Continuing trusts, conditional gifts, and disinheritance are among your many viable options. Remember that you can continually update your estate plan as circumstances change. For example, if your child demonstrates improved responsibility, you might adjust the plan to provide more autonomy. Collaborate with the professionals at Law Stein Anderson to create an estate plan that best suits your child’s circumstances while aligning with your values and wishes.
Continuing Trust
Not every child is responsible for handling a substantial inheritance without proper guidance. Opting for a continuing trust is an excellent way to safeguard your wealth and ensure your children can enjoy the future you envision. Utilizing a continuing trust allows you to hold funds for a specified period, avoiding outright distributions. This approach allows for controlled and gradual disbursements when children reach certain milestones. Therefore, you can ensure your hard-earned money is carefully managed to benefit your children.
Continuing trusts offer advantages in cases where a child stands to inherit funds while still a minor. Many jurisdictions restrict minors from owning property or receiving inheritances exceeding $20,000. When children are entitled to receive amounts beyond this limit, it often necessitates the establishment of a conservatorship. However, you can avoid this by setting up a continuing trust. Accordingly, you ensure the funds are managed responsibly and distributed upon your child’s financial readiness. Ultimately, this approach safeguards your child’s inheritance and offers them financial protection of their resources.
Conditional Gifts
Conditional gifts come with specific conditions that the recipient must fulfill to receive the gift entirely. These conditions can vary widely and may involve specific actions, behaviors, or circumstances that the giver wishes to see from the recipient. Conditional gifts are often given with the intention of motivating the recipient to achieve a particular goal. Care should be taken when setting conditions on gifts to ensure they are reasonable and respectful of the recipient’s wishes and needs.
Disinheritance
Disinheritance refers to intentionally excluding a family member from inheriting wealth that they might have otherwise been entitled to upon the death of the person making the will or estate plan. For example, someone may wish to disinherit a family member with a track record of mishandling finances or accumulating substantial debt. In some cases, disinheritance occurs due to disagreements over lifestyle choices.
An Alternative to Disinheriting Children to Avoid a Lawsuit
A family can avoid probate litigation if the owner of an estate leaves a small amount to the child or children they want to disinherit. For example, a person would like to disinherit their son and wants to give everything to their daughter. Instead of giving the son nothing and putting a potential lawsuit on the daughter’s hands, the person can leave the son just enough to make him question whether he wants to initiate a lawsuit. In most cases, trusts have no contest provisions. Therefore, he may get nothing if the son contests the trust and files a lawsuit. In most cases, the person receiving little realizes that little is better than nothing. The estate owner needs to explain in the estate documents why they wish to leave less to one child so there is no confusion if that child does decide to file a lawsuit.
Trust In Us.
Schedule Your Complimentary Consultation
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ATTORNEYS
We are an industry-leading estate, trust, and probate attorney serving clients with estate planning Irvine in CA and surrounding communities within Orange County, including Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.
We are a team of industry-leading estate, trust, and probate attorneys specializing in estate planning for an irresponsible child, estate planning during divorce, and estate planning for blended families in Orange County.