The Living Trust Advisor

CHAPTER 25 A Random Sampling of Cautionary Tales from the Inheritance Arena Or, Read About, and Learn from, My Previous Mistakes and the Mistakes of My Clients

Legal knowledge about Living Trusts is not enough to prevent problems from occurring in the inheritance arena. Like the medical doctor who gains experience on the ills and bodies of patients, so it is with the Living Trust attorney who gains wisdom, understanding, and sensitivity to forecasting potential problems by seeing what happens when money and property pass from a deceased person to a spouse, children, grandchildren, and others.

The stories in this chapter are true. Each story is representative of things gone wrong because of the failure to foresee consequences in the process of money and property going from the dead to the living. They are incidents from which I gained experience to better advise clients on the right way of transferring money and property after death.

With these stories, you will gain invaluable information and insight about your own Living Trust or other inheritance plan that comes only from being there when assets go from the dead to the living.

With these stories, you will see that unintended consequences are common in the inheritance arena.

With these stories, you will benefit from my many years of observing the hurt that occurs when a mistake is made in the Living Trust or the inheritance arena.

Cautionary Tale 1: The Last One on the Scene Gets the Money

Lesson to be learned: If one of ...