Boca Raton Estate Planning Attorney
Whether you currently have an estate plan in place, or not,
you will want to consider the following after adding a child to your family,
whether through surrogacy, adoption, or born to you. It is crucial to create or
modify an estate plan after welcoming a new child into the family.
If your child is a minor, have you considered who would be
the guardian of the child should you and your partner pass away? One of
the first things you will do in your estate plan is choosing guardians. You will
want to place the names of those guardians (and any backup) in your Will. You
should also complete a stand-alone guardianship form which can act outside the
Will.
Some of the questions you will want to discuss include: Did
you and your spouse enter your marriage with children from prior relationships?
If so, you will need to decide how each child is going to be treated. Are all
children going to be treated equally? If your adoptive child is
significantly younger than your other child(ren), you should consider if the
younger child would need more financial assistance than the older one, should
you pass away sooner.
Trusts
Trusts are the only way to avoid probate for your children or
any beneficiaries of your estate. Certain trusts can also act as asset
protection. Minor children cannot inherit outright and there will need to be
provisions in place, or a Court will appoint someone through the process of
probate. Additionally, even if your child isn’t a minor, do you want your
child to inherit all your assets at 18? If the answer is “no” (and for most
people it is), you should be thinking about placing your assets into a Trust to
be held for your child until certain events occur. These events are up to you.
The assets can remain in Trust until a certain age or until certain life events
occur. It can also be a combination of these and other considerations,
such as upon the completion of a finance course, passing a drug screen or
graduating with a degree, etc. Do you want to protect the assets that your child
inherits in the event your child later goes through a divorce? Remember, a
Trust can be modified over time. The decisions today are not necessarily the
final decisions as you age. As factors in your life change over time so should
your estate plan.
Does your adoptive child have special needs? If so, you
should consider a special needs trust. This will allow you to set
aside money for your child’s care without jeopardizing your child’s right to
receive government benefits.
Also of significance, stepparents who help raise a spouse’s
child but do not formally adopt the child, do not have legal ties to the child
that entitle the child to inherit from them. If a stepparent’s will or
trust merely provides that “all the children” will receive an equal share, the
stepchild will not receive anything.
You can schedule a call with us or reach us directly at
561-869-3703 to learn more about how to best plan today to protect your
children in the future.
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