Posts in category: Inheritance

In the estate planning process, you’ll handle big picture items such as homes, retirement accounts, life insurance policy, designations and other big assets like vehicles. However, even if you want your children to inherit all of your treasured possessions, this does not always mean that your children want to receive them or will handle these assets in the way in which you intend.

Treasured collections are significantly challenging because of the emotional attachment you have to these items. Whether it’s model trains, baseball cards, stamps, coins, or art, if your loved ones don’t share your same level of passion for these collectibles, they may be likely to get rid of them quickly for less than their full value because they don’t see the overall potential as a collectible.

This might also hurt other family members who hoped that your beneficiaries and heirs would keep these items and continue to pass them down to others in the family. If you have specific wishes about how these assets will be handled, make sure that you speak with the person who will receive them and document as much as possible in your estate plan.

If you do have loved ones who feel just as strongly about either your treasured collections or your other property, you might want to put it inside a trust. A trust can help to transfer this property more easily and effectively, assuming you can work with a dedicated estate planning lawyer to help you with this process.

The support of an attorney is very helpful in creating comprehensive estate plans that include things, such as valuable collections. Contact our NH or Maine estate planning lawyers today to get that process started for you.

You may be thinking carefully about the legacy you wish to leave behind for your loved ones, and the unique considerations of your family dynamics and your individual beneficiaries. This raises plenty of questions, including whether or not you can place restrictions on an inheritance left behind for loved ones. Anyone who is on the receiving end of an inheritance should clearly read the fine print of the will or other estate planning documents.

The creator of a will can specify that payments will be received in one large sum or in small installments. Furthermore, inheritances can be restricted to particular uses, such as education or the reaching of a certain milestone or an age. This is more common with trust distributions and trusts are often used by people who want to add on an additional layer of control to their estate planning. A trustee will have been appointed through the creation of a trust to manage those assets and to adhere to the terms of trust administration.

As a beneficiary, you are entitled to receive regular reporting from the trustee about what is happening with the assets inside the trust and you can also ask for copies of important documents that clarify when and how you will receive trust distributions. Bear in mind that as a beneficiary, you also have the legal right to hold a trustee accountable in court if they violate the law.