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Principled Advocacy For Families And Individuals With Disabilities And The Professionals Who Serve Them

You can decide when your heirs get their inheritance 

On Behalf of | Apr 5, 2023 | Estate Planning

There are many people who are a bit wary of leaving a significant amount of money to their heirs. They may believe that their heirs are not mature enough to handle it at their current age. They don’t want their inheritance to be squandered. They may also worry that a large inheritance would keep their heir from getting an education or seeking gainful employment. They don’t want to take away their motivation.

If you feel this way, it’s important to note that you can decide when your heirs get the money that you are leaving to them. Simply putting it in the will might not be sophisticated enough for your needs. What you’re going to want to do is put the money in a trust. Once you do this, the trust holds that money for you and it can only be distributed in accordance with the guidelines – such as holding the money until your heir reaches a specific age.

You can even pick multiple ages

A simple example of this would be if you have an heir who is in college. You worry about how a college student would use a large inheritance, so you don’t want them to get the money until they turn 30. You can also put money in a trust for heirs who are underage so that they can inherit it when they turn 18.

But you can make the trust more complex than this, perhaps by picking multiple ages. Maybe you want to leave 10% of the inheritance to the individual when they turn 18 years of age so that they feel like they get something substantial when they become an adult. But, to prevent them from wasting or squandering the bulk of that inheritance, you could set it up so that they get the rest of the money at 25, 30 or even 35 years old. You have the ability to pick whatever ages you would like.

You can see how beneficial a trust can be and how much control it can give you. Just be sure you know what legal steps to take to set it up.