Beyond the Grave: the Right Way and the Wrong Way of Leaving Money to Your Children and Others

[lightreads]

Beyond the Grave: the Right Way and the Wrong Way of Leaving Money to Your Children and Others

3/5. A quick, plain language review of all the major estate topics – how to think about division, trusts, property, pets, second marriages, estrangement, etc. with an emphasis on the interpersonal and familial aspects of inheritance planning. I never took trusts and estates in law school, which I have come to regret. Particularly now that I'm probably going to need a living trust in the next couple years. Adulthood, what the fuck?

Yes yes, I realize that I actually read this book because my father Is dying and it was this weird free association sideways think way of coping with that, what of it.

Anyway, this is genuinely useful, if deeply heteronormative. And also just . . . weird? I mean, I shouldn't be surprised to discover just how tied up the notion of traditional family – and specifically blood relation – is with the passing of money. But boy. There are very few of the many, many anecdotes in this book that aren't about someone believing as a law of the universe that marriage and sharing DNA entail the intergenerational transfer of money, and any other arrangement is morally wrong. The intensity of this belief, the unthinkingness of it, it's just . . . weird to me.

Comments

[lightreads]

Yeah, honestly I was assuming there was some sort of threshold trigger for that. And yes, you would probably pay, even if it's a non-professional person. The arrangement I've casually gamed out for our living trust would involve a friend serving as co-trustee in the event something happens to me (since I'm the one who understands money things) and that friend would get paid something like $5k/year for helping make distributions and decisions and things.

[the_rck]

I worry about my grandmother's living trust. Well, I don't so much worry about it while she's alive, but part of the point of it is to support my aunt who has brain damage (menengitis combined with alcoholic malnutrition). My uncle who is local to both Grandma and my aunt is one of the two trustees and does a great job. The other, due to family politics, is my father who cannot be trusted with money and who we all know cannot be trusted with money. He's on the other side of the country. I worry that he'll 'borrow' from the trust once Grandma's no longer with us (she's 92).

My father is the only person I've ever met who thought that he could sell land and not pay the IRS their share. He was really peeved when they started garnishing his paychecks.

I should probably talk to my uncle about getting my cousin, his son, who is local and thoroughly reliable added as a trustee. He'd do a good job of making sure that our aunt doesn't starve or end up homeless. He'd also go after my father if it needed doing. I'm less confident that my uncle would. I also don't want to see my father end up sole trustee if something happens to my uncle. My father's older by about eight years, but bad luck can happen any time, and my uncle smoked for decades.

[lightreads]

Yeah, this stuff is always hard one way or another. And bringing it up is even harder, at least in my family of birth, where there is going to be an epic shitshow when my maternal grandparents die. I will stay on the opposite coast and keep my head down, thankyouverymuch.

There is such a thing as a special needs trust, which doesn't solve the trustee problem, but could provide a stream of support to a disabled person without endangering any governmental benefits like SSI. They're kind of a pain to deal with, though, Is my understanding.