Should You Leave All of Your Money to Your Children?
By Barry Zimmer on July 13th, 2017 in Estate Planning for Young Children
Cincinnati inheritance planning attorneys can provide you with guidance and advice on making a plan for your legacy. Everyone needs to work with an attorney to decide what should happen to all of the assets that they work so hard to acquire during the course of a lifetime. After all, most people work for decades and earn anywhere from $1 to $4 million in lifetime earnings, according to data from the U.S. Census. While you’ll spend a lot of this money on living expenses over your lifetime, ideally you will also have savings and valuable assets that you can pass on to the next generation.
Zimmer Law Firm can help you to determine how to make effective use of legal tools to achieve your goals for protecting your wealth and for leaving the strongest legacy possible.
If you are a parent, one of your biggest questions about the legacy planning process may center around whether or not you should leave all of your wealth to your kids or whether you should do other things with it.
Although this is a very personal choice that you’ll need to make, Cincinnati estate planning lawyers can help you to understand some of the options available to you for what to do with your assets and can assist you in understanding the implications of passing on money to your kids or to other organizations if you could potentially owe estate tax. Give us a call to find out more about the ways in which our firm can help you with your legacy plan.
Should You Leave All Your Money to Your Children?
There are both pros and cons of leaving all of your money to your children, especially if you have a lot of money. Obviously, parents want their kids to have the best quality of life possible. If you provide a generous inheritance to your children (or provide any inheritance), your kids will have an easier time doing the things they want in life. They may have the financial security they need to avoid worrying about paying the bills and to do things like pay for college for your grandchildren.
Of course, if you want to ensure that money is used for something like education for your grandkids, you may wish to use other estate planning tools to ensure your funds go for this purpose instead of just using a simple will to allow your children to inherit.
The downsides of leaving money to kids – especially if it is a lot of money – is that the inheritance could make your children less responsible with money or could create a disincentive to work hard if kids know they can count on their inheritance to give them a comfortable life. You can work around this by talking with an estate planning attorney to create a trust that doles money out to your kids over time so the assets are not wasted or to create a trust with specific conditions. For example, you could specify that your kids will not be able to access their inheritance until they have successfully graduated college.
If you do make the decision to leave money to your children and your kids are not yet adults, you should work with Cincinnati inheritance planning attorneys to ensure you’ve named a trusted person to act as guardian of the assets you have left to the child. Zimmer Law Firm can help you to explore different tools you can use to provide an inheritance while making sure a guardian or trustee is in charge of managing it until the child is old enough and responsible enough to take on the task of money management.
Getting Help from Cincinnati Inheritance Planning Attorneys
Whether you decide you want to leave all of your money to your kids or you make a different decision, Zimmer Law Firm can help. We’ll assist you in making sure your children or other chosen beneficiaries inherit in the best and most appropriate way. If you decide that your goal is to give money to charity, we can also help you to structure your giving to make the most difference.
To find out more about the ways in which Cincinnati inheritance planning attorneys can help you to do good with the inheritance you’re leaving behind- whether for family, friends, or charitable causes- join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at 513.721.1513 to speak with an experienced, compassionate member of our legal team who can provide personalized advice to you. Call today to get your plan in place.