How Can You Avoid Estate Disputes in Blended Families?
Estate planning for blended family
Question:
What are the challenges of “blended families”? I’m thinking about the Casey Kasem case where his wife and child not only battled in court but he was moved out of state and all kinds of awful things occurred to create conflict over his final days and even after he passed – his final resting place. What should various family members be aware of and how important is it for the person to ensure all their family knows their wishes?
Response:
As you suggest, transparency is the best policy for avoiding estate and elder care disputes; otherwise, it’s impossible to know what anyone wants or has planned. This especially so in the case of blended families where the interests of the two families may not be aligned.
Proper estate planning can go a long way towards assuring that both spouses and their families will be protected, but I’ve seen instances of it going wrong despite the best laid plans, in large part because the children of the spouse did not trust the surviving spouse and did not understand what their father had wanted.
In one case in our office, for some reason the children also thought that their father was much wealthier than he actually was and jumped to the conclusion that their stepmother was hiding assets. If the father had shared both his estate plan and a general picture of his wealth (or lack thereof) with his children, it would have avoided a lot of strife after his death. (In this case, the father died unexpectedly at a relatively young age, which could explain why he hadn’t shared this information with his children.)
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