If you live in Florida and are working on your estate plan, you may have concerns about leaving money or assets to one or more of your children. Parents disinherit their children for many different reasons, but regardless of your reasoning for doing so, establishing a trust may help ensure your wishes come to fruition. At the Law Offices of Frye & Vasquez, P.L., we understand the estate planning needs of parents who wish to disinherit their children, and we have helped many such clients enact plans for their futures, and those of their families.
Per Kiplinger, creating a trust may help you avoid the process of probate, which can prove lengthy and complicated, and it may also help prevent your disinherited children from disputing your wishes in court. How? During probate, your heirs and beneficiaries receive notification that they are named in your will, and the details of your estate also become public record, giving children you left out an opportunity to contest the omission.
With a trust, however, it becomes much harder for your children to dispute your wishes, because a trust may help you sidestep the probate process entirely. Furthermore, you may be able, if you choose, to insert language into your trust dictating that anyone who challenges your wishes will be automatically excluded from receiving any assets.
A trust may also be a good idea if you plan not to disinherit a child entirely, but to leave your children differing amounts. Maybe you are estranged from one of your children, or perhaps one of them struggles with drug addiction, or general irresponsibility. A trust helps keep the information about what you leave to who under wraps, which can help prevent unnecessary family strife. More about establishing trusts is available on our website.
