Avoid Family Feuds with Help from an Estate Planning Attorney in Miami, FL

It is unfortunately all too common for family feuds to develop over issues involving inheritances and estates. These disputes can drag on for years after your death and wreak havoc on the contents of your estate, not to mention the long-term (and likely permanent) damage they can do to relationships among your family members.

With this in mind, here are some tips to help you avoid family feuds with the help of an attorney for wills and trusts in Miami, FL:

• Keep your children in the loop while developing your estate plan:
  One of the most common reasons these inheritance fights happen is that your heirs might feel blindsided by the contents of your estate plan. You can avoid these unpleasant surprises by keeping your children and other potential heirs at least somewhat in the loop while creating your wills and trusts. Hold a family meeting and discuss some of the basics that could affect them. You don’t necessarily have to go into too much detail, but you should at least provide enough information where nothing in your estate plan comes as a surprise to them after you pass.
• Keep things mostly equal:
  If you divide the estate mostly equally, you will avoid a lot of resentment that could come up. It could be tempting to give significantly more money to your children who make less, but it could make your children who make more feel penalized.
• Choose your executor:
  If you choose one of your children, make sure you have a clear reason as to why you select that child over the other. You might find it easiest, for example, to have the child who lives closest to you execute your estate. Or you could have a child who works in an area that provides them with the legal or financial skills necessary to handle the task efficiently and appropriately. Regardless, having an executor in place with clear reasons for doing so will help prevent feuds from occurring and/or escalating.
• Have a plan for valuables or sentimental items:
  There are some types of items in your estate that might have extra value, whether it is monetary or sentimental. In fact, sentimental items often create more drama in inheritances than anything else. Therefore, it’s best to have a plan in place that everyone is clued in on about how certain sentimental items will be split up among your loved ones. Come up with a plan for choosing who gets what and make plenty of compromises along the way.
• Leave explanatory letters attached to your will:
  You can also add extra explanatory letters to your will to explain to your loved ones why you made the decisions you did. It’s best to use this as a supplementary tactic to having open and honest conversations with your loved ones, but you can go into even greater detail with these letters about specific items.

For more information, contact an estate planning attorney in Miami, FL at Rubén J. Padrón, PA.

Categorised in: Estate Planning