Hey there, Bridget MacKay at MacKay Dressler Law Firm. And today I want to talk to you about avoiding family disputes through clear planning. So, a lot of us have this fantasy that when we pass away, our loved ones are going to become closer together because I’ll be gone and they’re going to cling to each other out of love, loyalty, and being siblings or aunts and uncles, whatever it is. Time and time again, unfortunately, I’ve seen the opposite. I’m sure you guys have too. That when someone dies, that sort of structure that was in place is gone, and disputes can quickly arise over things, over money, over things said, or the way the funeral was don,e or who looked at who funny at some point.
So, I’m going to give you some ways to eliminate some of these problems.
We can’t eliminate them completely, as I’ve learned in the years I’ve been doing this, because there are some sandbox issues that I see siblings continue to fight over, even though they’re in their 60s. But there are some ways to reduce the likelihood of this conflict, or these conflicts.
And the first thing is, don’t leave your planning to the last minute.
I see this all the time. It’s not unusual for a 70, 80, even a 90-year-old man to be coming in and making a plan. And that frankly is too late. You really should get this planning together. Think about it and get it done as soon as possible.
Once you do make a plan, make sure people who need to know know it. I lean towards transparency, so I encourage my clients that if there’s a dispute between siblings, or they’re giving more to one child than the other, or they’re making one child a successor trustee, and they think that the other one will be upset by that knowledge, that we work this out ahead of time. That whoever is going to be out of sorts knows that it’s coming. And on the other end, even though they’re out of sorts and it’s awkward in that moment while you’re alive and you have to deal with it, but on the other side, you’ve just made things smoother in most cases.
Then, once you have a plan, you want to update that plan on a regular basis.
Estate plans are kind of like a living entity, right? As your life changes, sometimes your plan needs to change as well.
Also, when you’re going through the plan or if you have a plan in place and things are changing with you, always stay communicating with your successor trustee and even your beneficiaries and maybe even your children. Keep people up to date. It no longer works for families to kind of keep everything close to the vest. I don’t want to tell my kids because I don’t want them to get greedy. All of those strategies of days past really don’t work anymore. Because things have gotten more complex, and our experience has been that way of being that you want to keep everything close to the vest because you don’t want your kids to get greedy, or you don’t want them to know how much you have. All of those things don’t work. I mean, share it. Your children are going to be more mature than you think they are.
And make sure you’re clear about your succession plan and that that is communicated to those people who are your successors. Kind of the same thing I said before.
At the end of the day, in my experience, the way a trust or an estate plan ends up after a death or even an incapacity is such that it’s dealt with smoothly. And actually, the family stays together and stays in communication as if they know exactly what’s going to happen. Because I can tell you the next generation is concerned about you, right? We are aging, and they want to make sure you have a plan. It’s a plan they know about, and they know what’s in the plan.
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