The Brady Bunch Breaks Down: Estate Fights Tear Stepfamilies Apart - WSJ

More American couples are coming together with children from prior relationships. It often goes well until it comes time to read the will.

When a parent dies, the typical order of operations for married couples with children is for everything to go to the surviving spouse, and then to their children. But this can be a disaster for blended families since a surviving spouse often has no obligation to leave assets to stepchildren. Stepchildren have lost out on their inheritance, while stepsiblings got it all. Arguments have turned nasty. Some families stop speaking to each other without lawyers present as the bills mount. The damage can be irreparable.

“Once the tie that binds dies, there’s no longer a need to get along,” said Marya Robben, an estate lawyer with Lathrop GPM in Minneapolis.

In one case she handled, the children changed the locks and kicked their stepmom out of the house before the funeral. In other cases, adult children were shocked to discover they were passed over and their parent’s new spouse or partner got everything.

“Adult children do not have a right to an inheritance,” Robben said.

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For blended families, the key to staving off a crisis later is complex estate planning. When there are new spouses and children from previous unions involved, there are many confounding choices that will have to be made.

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Blended families should consider naming an outsider as executor or trustee instead of a relative, a biological child of one parent, or even one child from each side, said Paul Hood, a retired estate planner in Hazel Park, Mich. Yet when a family is blended at an early age, parents are more likely to stick with traditional estate-planning techniques, leaving decision-making to family members.

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