Children from a First Marriage: How to Protect Their Inheritances

Have you gotten divorced and remarried after having children with your first spouse? If so, you will likely need to approach estate planning a little bit differently than other Norcross residents who are not in blended families. While blending families often include parents, step-parents, step-siblings, and half-siblings that all get along quite well with one another, blended families can also have complications. In particular, children from your first marriage might be concerned about where they stand in the new blended family, and they may have concerns about their inheritance — especially if you have a new spouse and children from your second marriage.

If you are in this situation, it is important to know that there are a number of estate planning tools that can protect the inheritances of your children from your first marriage, which can also give them peace of mind. Consider the following options, and do not hesitate to get in touch with a Norcross estate planning lawyer to discuss your specific needs today.

Revocable Living Trust 

Often in blended families with children from a first marriage, a revocable living trust is one of the easiest ways to protect the inheritances of your children from your first marriage. A revocable living trust allows you to place assets into a trust and to designate beneficiaries for those assets, as well as to determine how and when those assets are distributed. With this type of trust, you can designate specific assets for your children from your first marriage. This type of trust is also extremely popular for this purpose because it will allow you to retain control over the trust during your lifetime. If you choose to change the terms or to cancel the trust altogether, you will be free to do so since it is a “revocable” trust.

Designate Beneficiaries 

If you know that you want your children from your first marriage to inherit specific assets held in a type of bank account, or real estate, you can designate them as beneficiaries. For bank accounts, you can designate payable-on-death beneficiaries. For real estate, you can name one or multiple children as beneficiaries in a transfer-on-death deed.

Create a Will

You can also create a will that specifically identifies assets and beneficiaries to receive them. Unlike the above methods, however, assets left to any of your children through a will must go through the probate process before they can be distributed.

Contact a Gwinnett County Estate Planning Lawyer Today

When you have children from a first marriage and later remarry, it can be difficult to know what steps you need to take to ensure that all of your children’s inheritances are protected. Regardless of whether you have had children in a subsequent marriage, estate planning in a blended family can be more complex than estate planning for those who are not in a similar situation. Yet there are helpful estate planning tools to make certain that your children’s inheritances are protected. Whether you want to create a trust or to learn more about beneficiary designations, an experienced Gwinnett County estate planning attorney at Bowman Law Firm can assist you. Contact us today for more information.

Source:

law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-53/