Wealth Planning Blog

As if estate planning didn't already seem complicated enough, blended families now make up a growing portion of our demographic and pose many additional considerations when trying to plan for the transition of their estate. When I started my practice as a wealth planning attorney, I would say about two out of ten families that I met with for estate planning or administration purposes were what we call "blended families" - families where at least one person brought children from a prior marriage. 

If you haven’t had the pleasure of administering someone’s trust estate yet, you are likely to either be involved in such an administration someday, or will have someone administering yours for you in the future. Many trusts being administered today, however, were drafted in the 80’s and 90’s and were never updated or revisited once they were put into place. This leaves children and grandchildren struggling to administer trust estates subject to terms that are either outdated or simply don’t make sense anymore for their families.