Blended Families and their Estate Planning Challenges

✤ More and more Australians today get married more than once and as a result, estate planning issues involving blended families are more common these days.

✤ A blended family is formed when there are children from more than one relationship.

✤ A typical example of this is where a man has children with his first wife, Then re-marries another woman and has additional children with her.

✤ This situation can raise particular challenges for estate planning.

✤ Because marriage automatically revokes all prior Wills, his older children may be concerned that his new wife and her children may influence him to their advantage, at the expense of the older children’s inheritances.

Among other things, these are some aspects that you have to carefully consider:

✤ Titling your assets to balance their legal ownership.

✤ Creating a discretionary trust that will remove your assets from your probate estate.

✤ Guarding against allegations of incapacity, by getting examined by a doctor to obtain a written certificate confirming you have all of your faculties, so it can be attached to your Will and other estate-planning documents.

✤ The “what-if” consequences of certain events, such as your second spouse also re-marrying after your death.

✤ These concerns can become a potential minefield of litigation, where competing family interests and loyalties can divide into battle-groups all too easily.

✤ In order to avoid complications and misunderstandings, you need to exercise much caution as you create your Will and estate plan.

✤ You should find a lawyer who specialises on Wills and estate planning in Adelaide to help you create a modern integrated estate plan.

✤ Rod Genders is a senior Australian lawyer specialising in Wills and estate planning, probate and estate administration.

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Blended Families and their Estate Planning Challenges

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