YOURS, MINE, AND OURS WISE WOMEN PLAN EVEN MORE CAREFULLY
Yours, mine, and ours — these are several pronouns, and they include multiple people. No matter what type of blended family situation you’re in, extra components indicate that some wise planning is needed.
First of all — and we can’t stress this enough — if you have children by another relationship, you need a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement in your new
marriage. Having one shows that you care enough about your children to ensure they are provided for if something happens to you. We get it. It’s an awkward conversation. But a couple who loves each other and their children will have the tough conversations. In those moments, it’s nice to have a competent and friendly estate lawyer to help facilitate the discussion. There are many additional ways to ensure your children are not cut out of an estate plan after you die. Some are simple, and some are complex (we deal with both). The important thing is that you discuss it with your estate planning lawyer, because bad things tend to happen when you don’t.
Consider this criminally common example. A married couple plans to leave everything to each other when they die. Then, upon both deaths, they want to leave everything to their respective children — his and hers — together. In a perfect world, that plan would hold up once one of them dies, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, upon one’s death, their spouse has a falling out with the stepchildren or gets remarried and changes the estate plan to omit the stepchildren altogether. They end up with nothing. Here’s the moral of the story: Wise women in blended families plan even more carefully than others. For more information on planning for your unique family situation, give us a call!
There are times when my greatest accomplishment is just keeping my mouth shut.
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