As an Arizona resident who has more than one child, you need to take extra care when crafting your estate plan to avoid unnecessary trouble. Sometimes, the steps you make during estate planning have the potential to cause conflicts between your children.
According to AARP, inheritance battles may take time, money and attention away from your beneficiaries’ day-to-day lives. These conflicts also have the potential to do permanent damage to sibling relationships. However, you may be able to lower the chances of inheritance conflicts arising by doing the following.
Leave all children equal amounts
You may have concerns about one or more of your children blowing through what you leave behind. However, you might want to reconsider leaving some children more than others, as this is a frequent cause of conflict. If you have a child you fear might waste what you leave him or her, consider leaving those individual assets in a trust with certain conditions attached to it.
Give your kids an idea of your plans
You may also be able to cut the chances of an inheritance conflict arising between or among your kids by sitting them down while you are still able and giving them an idea of what they stand to inherit. You do not have to give exact dollar amounts, as you may have no idea how much of your estate might remain by the time you die. However, giving your children a sense of what they might get may help bring them down to earth and eliminate any grandiose ideas about a major payday.
Inheritance battles may result in lifelong damage to familial relationships. For this reason, taking steps to reduce the chances of them is often an important part of estate planning.