Blended families – what are the issues that arise during Estates and how can they be bypassed?
Blended families (“Brady Bunch families”) create special problems and their own challenges in estate planning. Children of past marriages need to be considered and both sets of children need their interests protected, without it impacting on the needs of a current spouse or partner.
Problems that occur from blended family estates include forgetting how assets are held, which therefore automatically pass to a joint owner, potentially creating conflict between the children of the deceased and the beneficiary, failing to distinguish giving “use” of assets to a surviving spouse during their lifetime, as opposed to an outright gift of those assets and creating dissent between the adult children of the previous marriages and the younger children of the current marriage. [...]