Reply to How to ensure my kids inherit my money if my husband remarried and died?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’d trust my DH to ensure our children were cared for. I think it’s much more important to worry about this after divorce with possible remarriages on the horizon. But death I guess is possible too.

But we don’t have millions, so if I died I’d want DH to have access to all of it[b] to make sure the kids could be provided for.[/b] I guess if I was going to get a a big inheritance I’d maybe put that in a trust on my death to go to my kids. But. I trust my DH with this. [/quote]

I think this is an okay way to think about it when your kids are minors--they still need caring for and your DH will be tied to being their father in every day life -- and your kids will grow up in a life without you, but one where you financially ensured their well-being through childhood the best you could.
But once your kids are adults, out on their own, that's where it gets trickier.  If your DH remarries, the needs of the person nearest to him--the new spouse--just will likely to tend to loom larger than his memories of what you would have wished for your kids.  And your kids will be adults, hopefully reasonably financially secure and not in your DHs daily life as much as the new wife.  This will be true if she's a decent, loving person who is similar to him in financial resources and makes his life better--but it will be even more true if this is a person--decent or otherwise-- who purposefully entered his life to gain financial security and has genuine financial needs.

And like another poster mentioned, though women have traditionally been less likely to die first, less likely to remarry and even less likely to disinherit their adult kids on purpose in favor of a new spouse, they can fall prey to all sorts of influences that wreak havoc on their assets.  We're all going to be declining cognitively too--so we can't extrapolate from our thinking now to how we will act in old age.

Upshot is, once your kids are adults, make a deal with your spouse on how you can each leave some assets to your kids directly if you have the financial means to do so.  Then with the remainder do the best you can with a trust and an estate planner to protect the assets.

[/quote]

+1 million.

We have a blended family and have been though this with estate lawyers, and pretty much all you can do is make specific bequests to the children, to the extent you can afford to, and then set up trusts for the children with life estates for the surviving spouse. At some point, you just have to trust your partner to do what’s right. [/quote]

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