As an estate planning attorney in New Haven, Connecticut, I counsel clients in all stages of life and with varying backgrounds. Some clients are single, some are married, some are divorced or widowed, and some are in second or third marriages. While all of these situations require different considerations from an estate planning perspective, clients who have remarried and have children from prior marriages find themselves in a unique position. How do they provide for their spouse and ensure their children from a previous marriage are also taken into consideration?
To illustrate the potential problem, take the following example: John and Jane are married, and each has a child from a previous marriage. John and Jane both have wills that leave their entire estates to each other. John dies with a $2,000,000 estate that Jane receives according to John’s will. After John’s death, Jane updates her estate plan and leaves her estate (including the $2,000,000 from John) to her daughter from a previous marriage. Whether intentional or due to poor estate planning, Jane’s new estate plan has completely cut John’s child out of any inheritance. Moreover, there is little John’s child can do to prevent this outcome.
For the vast majority of my clients, this is not the outcome they envision when they leave their estate to their surviving spouse. For such clients, I have great news! The outcome described above is entirely avoidable with proper estate planning. By using trusts in your estate plan, you can ensure you get to have your cake and eat it too (or at the very least, your children from a prior marriage get to eat a piece).
If you are remarried with children from a prior marriage and want to ensure that your current spouse and children from your prior marriage are taken care of in your estate plan, contact me at (203) 789-2943 or by emailing me at jmcclure@gs-lawfirm.com.
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