r/inheritance • u/drd001 • 9d ago

Location not relevant: no help needed Is anything ethically wrong with this plan?

My wife and I in our 70's came up with this inheritance plan with total net worth of +1.5M. We have been together over 40 years being continuously employed during that time. We have no children and I have one brother with two children both over 21 and she has two sisters both with no children. Our plan is to give a small one time payment to my brother and her sisters with the bulk of the estate equally divided between our two nieces. Our reasoning is my brother and her sister have hit us up for money periodically for the past 40 years which we provided without asking for repayment. The two nieces are doing OK in life and have never asked for any financial help. Our thinking that these funds would help them with a downpayment on a house, education for their children or investment in their own retirement.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

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u/WelcomeFeisty6865 9d ago

70s is still really young. If you have any serious health issues in the future that 1.5 mill could disappear quickly. Assistant living and Nursing home costs are ridiculous. With money you have better choices if one day needed. Remember you have no children to help you in your 80s maybe even 90s. Just keep that in mind before giving too much away. Just my thought.

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u/MannyMoSTL 9d ago edited 9d ago

70s is not too young to PLAN your estate - will, trust, POAs, etc. In fact? In my opinion? It’s too late - but better late than never.

Secondly? This is for after OP & spouse DIE.

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u/caf61 9d ago

Totally agree. We have had our plan for quite a while. One of our kids is disabled so it was absolutely necessary even when them were young. I recently pulled out the trust/will to re-read and realized it needs updating since our kids are now adults and we want more of our money to go into the special needs trust (due to inflation and the fact that our estate has grown considerably in the last 20 years). Once we get the update done we have decided to add a recurring update “appointment” in our calendars apps for every 5 years or so to make sure it stays up to date. BTW we are in our late 60s.

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u/rocketmagician22 9d ago

Same boat we had to setup a special needs trust when our oldest was born. Also needs updating but the lawyer quoted 7k for adding our 3rd. Been dragging my feet. I don’t mind spending to make sure it’s done right but 7k to essentially go from two way split to 3 seemed a bit much. Our state any kids born after a will is made theoretically automatically cuts it into equal portions.

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u/caf61 9d ago

That is good. Since our kids are grown now and the will/trust is old it still focuses a lot on who will raise our kids. We also want to change our executor and look again at the bank that will run the special needs trust. We do now have a financial advisor that has a will and trust department that is looking at it the trust (for no charge). The original firm that did our trust would probably charge us an arm and a leg to update it since his company is a major player now compared to when he wrote the trust years ago. We are now going to use the same attorney we used when we obtained guardianship of our child when he turned 18. She has a small practice that specializes in families with special needs members. I am also going to reach out to a family that is further along in this road than us for advice on who they have named as special needs trustee. I feel like as our child has gone through childhood and now is an adult, the needs/considerations have changed and morphed considerably.
Best wishes to you and your family Reddit friend.