Welcome back. Our lawyer in Raleigh NC is here to talk more about North Carolina’s inheritance law and how you can better understand it when estate planning. And our previous post, we talked about ex-spouses and current spouses. Today, we will move on to talk about children.
Inheritance | Lawyer Raleigh NC
Most of the time, we plan to leave our children with some or all of our possessions in the event of our death. If you would like to leave your children money, real estate, vehicles or any other type of belongings that you personally own, you should document each of your wishes properly within your estate plan and will. Otherwise, your belongings may end up in probate court. Without a proper will and estate plan, it will be difficult to know what your actual wishes were. That’s why it’s important to not only make sure you properly estate plan, but also update your plan at least once every couple of years.
Those who make estate plans before having children should update their plan to include inheritance for their children after they’ve been born. Otherwise, as we stated above, your will may not be valid. It will then go to probate court. This can be costly and take a great deal of time to deal with. Instead of leaving your loved ones to handle this after you’ve passed, consider making sure you’re will is updated as soon as changes within your life are made.
It's possible that you may choose to disinherit your children from your belongings. There are several reasons why this might be the case:
- If your son or daughter has had a long, drawn out addiction to drugs and can’t seem to fight it enough to fully recover, you may be considering disinheriting them. You might worry they’ll use all their inheritance on more drugs. If you choose to disinherit them, you might want to consider leaving their share of your estate to your grandchildren. If you appoint a trustee that you can rely on, the inheritance will be used to meet the child’s needs without the child having any control over it. In addition, you can also set up a trust that will meet your addict child’s needs. They won’t be able to use the inheritance for anything but living expenses; food, rent, mortgage and clothing.
- Many special needs children receive government benefits that might interfere with an inheritance. In order to help the child continue with their benefits, parents might decide to disinherit the special needs child. In this case, there are ways to create a special needs trust so that the child isn’t completely omitted from the will or estate plan. When taking this route, a trustee should also be appointed. The trust will help provide supplemental support for your special needs child.
- While we did talk in detail about this in our last article, we wanted to do a quick recap here. The definition of estranged is someone who is unsympathetic, indifferent or unaffectionate to a loved one. It’s turning away from someone that once meant a great deal to you. We hear about estranged wives or husbands all the time. It’s not as common to hear about an estranged son or daughter. When this happens to with our children, it's usually when something happens out of anger.
There might be other reasons, as well. No matter why you're considering this, it's important to document the reasons within your will. Leaving your children out of the will without a reason could result in legal issues.
We hope this information helps you better understand inheritance laws. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our lawyer at any point. We are here to help you with estate planning, updating your will and more. Contact our lawyer in Raleigh NC now to discuss this matter further.
A lawyer in Raleigh NC who knows about estate planning will be able to review your situation and provide the best solutions that will meet your needs and will also be legally sound. He or she may also suggest other things that you may not have considered before, such as creating a durable power of attorney or a healthcare directive to give guidance in situations where you may not be able to make decisions on your own anymore. There are many facets to an estate plan. Eldreth Law Firm can talk with you about your situation and help guide you in creating a plan that meets your needs. Contact us, today.
