Estate Planning Blended Families Ontario

If you follow some simple steps you can come up with a plan that meets everyone s needs.

Estate planning blended families ontario.

In most blended family situations each partner wants to ensure that when they die their children as well as their new love will be treated fairly and will receive as much financial support as possible. If this situation describes your family you can do some careful estate planning to address your family s special needs. Blended families are increasingly common and as an advisor you ll likely have clients with children from one or more prior relationships. Estate planning for blended familiescan be a particular challenge for inexperienced amateurs and even professionals because the standard clauses of a will may have unintended consequences.

Assume two spouses are in a second marriage and each have children from a prior marriage. Mike and carol brady were the iconic blended family each bringing 3 children into the marriage and raising them as one big happy family. Premarital and marital agreements. When it comes to estate planning for a blended family the concept of yours mine and ours can complicate the process to the point that family dynamics become permanently strained.

So bringing two entire families together under one roof can create additional challenges. Depending on a family s situation and needs an estate planning attorney can help select and execute one of the following strategies. These are a few common scenarios. Estate planning for blended families is a form of asset protection.

Estate planning for blended families second marriage estate planning for blended families second marriage and step children require special planning to ensure your spouse and your children are protected. I wonder what their estate planning looked like. These agreements should address. Unfortunately if proper planning is not undertaken what often occurs in the blended family context is that one branch of the family receives the entire estate and the other branch of the family receives nothing.

Both her and her new spouse were widowed and had adult children. Successful blended family estate planning is a matter of setting and communicating goals learning the available legal strategies implement ing the chosen documents and setting appropriate expec tations for the client.