Four Inheritance Ideas To Avoid Family Conflict
- clareword
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Last week I met with an older widow and her friend who asked to meet for guidance on inheritance questions. She has three children who have not treated her, or each other with love and respect. The kids in their 50’s claim to be Christians but after hearing their mother I had doubts. “Clare, I don’t trust my children to be fair with each other when I die with my personal possessions. Is there anything I can do now to lessen the potential conflict?”
Yes, there is. I’ve sat with dozens of people over the years with similar concerns and I’ve had to mediate too many family wars over inheritance. Susan and I have had to think through many of the same questions. Praise God our kids love God, enjoy each other and respect us. And while not all of the following ideas pertain to this woman’s family they may to yours.
My first piece of advise is this: Don’t ever have as the executor/trustee of your estate someone your children have Thanksgiving dinner with.
Here’s my rationale; If one of your children is the executor of your estate it puts them in a very difficult situation. They may have to make decisions about how to dispose of your personal property or investments and decide who gets what and when that their siblings might consider unfair or unwise. And even if your children get along there are sons, or daughters in law who will have an opinion. Susan and I have asked a trusted and spiritually mature friend to serve as executor/trustee and we’ve told all of our children why. It’s not that we don’t trust them. We just want them to enjoy their inheritance and each other long after we’re gone.
Consider not dividing up your estate and giving 100% of it to your family.
If God owns everything you have your children have no “right to it,” other than tradition. I’m not aware of any New Testament examples or teachings of Christians leaving an inheritance other than a “spiritual inheritance,” and in Luke 12:13-21 Jesus refuses to get involved in an inheritance dispute. If you truly believe everything you “own” belongs to God that means you and your spouse should pray long and hard for wisdom as to how much the Lord wants you to leave your children and how much you should give to Christian ministries.
I’ve see too many children left too much money by well-meaning parents who used those funds foolishly simply to improve their lifestyle. There’s another more practical reason for not splitting your estate equally between all your children. A few decades ago I was involved with a family who had a wonderful older mother wanting to stay in her home to die which required expensive private nursing which she could easily afford to do. But several of her children wanted her to go to a nursing home and their siblings knew why. It was cheaper. They did the math. There were four children, so every dollar spent on mom’s care meant $.25 less for each child in inhertitence. The lesson I took from that is this; Never tempt your children to save money on end-of-life care.
When it comes to disposing of personal property I have two recommendations:
A. Decide while your living who gets what. My advice is to take a photo of every piece of your personal property that you intend to give to your family. Then write that persons name on the photo and date and sign it. Then give it to the executor of your estate for safekeeping. This will do away with the classic, “Mom wanted me to gave these dishes,” conflict.
B. Write out either in your will or in instructions to your executor this idea; “Upon the last of us to die, please do not allow any of our family members to enter our home without you, or another family member present. We don’t want to risk hard feelings if one family member removes anything from our home thinking they deserve it, or believe it was promised to them. We recommend bringing in an independent estate appraiser to put a value on each peice of our personal property including vehicles other than the items we’ve previously in writing indicated who should receive them. Then each family member can bid on any item they want using their share of the money each will eventually receive anyway. Then on a day you designate when you can be present all family members can come and pick up any items we have previously promised to them and the items they are willing to purchase. The balance of the items will be sold by a professional estate liquidation company and the proceeds will become part of our estate to be distributed as we’ve directed. There may be small items like small tools, kitchen items and other property that have a value of less than $100 you, the executor may give to any family member who asks for them with out payment.”
Consider holding a family meeting to discuss each of these ideas and your actual will while you are still living.
Every 6-10 years Susan and have hosted a family meeting to have an open discussion on inheritance. We send a copy of our latest will, or draft to each child a few weeks ahead of time and any instructions we’ve given, or are about to give to our executor. We encourage them to “talk behind our back,” about anything we are proposing then have one child present in an email to us any questions, or suggestions anyone has suggested without attributing them to a particular person. We want this process to be transparent and safe for those with different ideas. If this idea sounds terrifying to you consider this. My experience is that if you are not transparent and willing to listen to your children, after you die what happens to your family may cause more grief than if you’d left them nothing at all.
That’s it! Please chime in with your own ideas, or comment on mine. But in any case decide to be intentional with everything God has entrusted to you as if it doesn’t belong to you.