Estate Planning Blended Families Australia

Estate planning for blended family wills can be a difficult task for clients entering their second or third marriage particularly when both parties bring children from a prior marriage.

Estate planning blended families australia.

Estate planning for blended families second marriage and step children require special planning to ensure your spouse and your children are protected. As a funeral celebrant robyn o connell 61 is constantly reminded that death can come at any time. 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. For estate planners dealing with the control of a trust in the event of death is compounded by issues faced by blended families with competing interests.

These are a few common scenarios. Depending on a family s situation and needs an estate planning attorney can help select and execute one of the following strategies. In estate planning for blended families. 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.

These agreements should address. Even with advice estate planning for blended families can hardly be called straightforward. Her funeral is all planned but when it comes to wills she and her second husband david 56 have writer s block. Estate planning for blended families is a form of asset protection.

What many australians do not understand is that assets held in trust cannot be dealt with by a will and do not form part of a deceased estate. Premarital and marital agreements. Balancing your planning for spouses children and stepchildren in estate planning for blended families. In these situations the objectives of planning an estate include providing for the surviving spouse in the second marriage providing for children of the second marriage and ensuring that assets flow to children of the first marriage.

Assume two spouses are in a second marriage and each have children from a prior marriage. I wonder what their estate planning looked like. Barnes richard e.