5 Common Estate Planning Concerns For Your Second (or More) Marriage

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we will work with you, taking into account your unique family dynamics, assets, and potential areas of risk and conflict to help you determine the optimal time to pass on your wealth and other assets to your heirs to ensure it has the maximum benefit for everyone involved.

3. Carefully Consider Your Trustees

A common scenario for blended families is for one spouse to set up a revocable living trust that names themselves as the trustee during their lifetime, with the surviving spouse named successor trustee once the first spouse dies. Yet, this would leave all decisions related to the trust assets to the surviving spouse, which could cause conflict with the children from your prior marriage. 

For example, the new spouse may choose to invest the trust assets conservatively, ensuring he or she has enough money to live comfortably for a few decades instead of investing the assets for growth. On the other hand, the children—particularly if they are younger—might be better off having the assets placed into higher-risk investments, which can offer better returns in the long run, but leave less income for the surviving spouse.

In this case, it could be best to name a neutral third party as successor trustee so that both your children's and surviving spouse’s interests can be balanced fairly.

4. Preventing Conflict
If you are in a second (or more) marriage, with children from a prior marriage, the conflicting interests of your children and spouse can create serious strife between them in the event something happens to you. To reduce the likelihood of conflict, your estate plan needs to contain clear and unambiguous terms, spelling out the beneficiaries’ exact rights and the rights and responsibilities of executors and/or trustees. Such precise terms help ensure all parties know exactly what you intended.

Additionally, it’s essential that you meet with all affected parties within your blended family while you’re still alive (and of sound mind) to clearly explain your wishes directly if you hope for your loved ones to love each other after you are gone. Sharing your intentions and hopes for the future with your new spouse and children from a prior marriage can go a long way in preventing disagreements over your wishes for each of them.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can even facilitate these meetings to help ensure your blended family maintains a harmonious relationship no matter what happens to you.

5. Planning For Incapacity

In addition to planning for your eventual death, you must also plan for your potential incapacity. In this case, you’ll need to discuss how planning vehicles for your incapacity, such as a durable financial power of attorney, medical power of attorney, and a living, will be handled. 

For example, if you become incapacitated, who would you want to make your legal, financial, and medical decisions for you? If your children are young, leaving those decisions up to your surviving spouse is best. However, if your children are older, you may want them included in the discussion of how such decisions will be made. Or you may prefer to name one of your adult children as your decision maker, or you might divide the different duties between your spouse and adult children.

Regardless of what you choose, we can support you in creating an estate plan that ensures your incapacity will be managed exactly how you would want in every possible scenario.

Bringing Families Together
Along with other major life events like births, deaths, and divorce, entering into a second (or more) marriage requires reviewing and reworking your estate plan carefully. And updating your plan is exponentially more important when there are children involved.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we’ve been specially trained to counsel blended families on how to properly protect their assets in a manner that’s best for both the spouse and any children involved. We will ensure that you and your new spouse can clearly document and communicate your wishes to avoid any confusion or conflict over how assets and/or legal agency will be managed and passed on in the event of one spouse’s death or incapacity.

If you have a blended family or are in the process of merging two families into one, sit down with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® to discuss your different planning options. Contact us today to schedule your visit.

This article is a service of Mindful Legacy Planing, Personal Family Lawyer®. We do not just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session™, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge.