The Living Trust Advisor

CHAPTER 15 Don’t Intentionally Leave Your Children Unequal Inheritances Or, So What If One Needs It More Than the Other?

I have demonstrated to you throughout this book that I am a master of stating the obvious. Such mastery will be quite evident in this chapter. Let me start off with two facts that you already know about leaving your money and property:

1. Your money and property are your money and property. You can do whatever you want with them during your lifetime, and you have the unfettered authority to decide who shall receive them after your death.
2. There is no law in the United States that requires you to leave any of your assets to your children.

Having made these bold and unequivocal assertions, it is, nonetheless, highly likely you will name your children in your Living Trust as your beneficiaries. Of course, if you have no children, or if you have cut your children out of the inheritance, you will not be caught up in this sweeping generalization. But for the purposes of this chapter, you are in the vast majority of fairly conventional people with children who will be the beneficiaries of your Living Trust assets.

When it comes to leaving your Living Trust assets to your children, the best advice that I can offer you is to leave them each an equal inheritance. Even though you can divide your assets among your children as you wish, the goal of preserving family harmony in the inheritance arena, to my mind, trumps that particular exercise of free will. I can guarantee ...