Hi. Lee Phillips.
Yeah, I'm an attorney. Don't hold that against me.
I want to talk to you about avoiding the family fight.
I had a friend who was a lawyer and he always said that
the greed of children
He called it the avarice
but the greed of children rises to its maximum
at the death of a parent
which I frankly find is true.
Things go wacko when mom and dad die.
so how do you avoid the family fight
when mom and dad and I are when you die
fights with your kids.
a couple of things you can do.
One, you have a living revocable trust and avoid probate and the funny thing is
if I can avoid the time and the frustration and the money and stuff--of probate--
then things seem to go a lot smoother
people start to get upset
when this thing is drug out for 10 years
probate--we avoid it with the living revocable trust being properly funded
that means it has to own the assets that
are required to be owned by the trust in order to avoid the probate.
So one have the living trust, avoid the probate.
Two, get rid of the dollies and the doilies
I can divide up a bank account five ways
right even with each one of the kids
no problem
but there's only one dolly and
only one doily as I call them.
I've seen the fight over the Parcheesi board
that the kids played every week with mom and dad at the family gathering.
I've seen the fight over dad's class ring.
And that was a big time judge.
he died and left a class ring
kids tore each other apart
so there are things that you have
that are of value independent of the monetary value
Those things you have to distribute.
You can do it in a will.
particularly if the will has a provision in it
that says that you can attach something to it
and have a list of items
that are distributed through the will or
you can do it in the living trust
you can name the items specifically in the trust
or a lot of trusts will allow you to attach
what we call a schedule or an exhibit
to the back of the trust
which has all of the dollies and doilies listed on
you just need to be able to list the item
and then say who gets it.
Now you may not make the right choice
in that discussion or in that
gift to the child
but that's okay if the kids can straighten it out that's fine
but if the kids can't strain it out
one kid didn't steal it from the other kid
and screw them.
You made a mistake
and I tell my clients all the time
kid comes in madder than beans at mom and dad
because they didn't leave him that whatever is
I say fine
go out and jump up and down on top of their grave
yell at them all day long I don't care
so you make the decision
and you get rid of the dollies and the doilies
and like I said there aren't that many of them in your house
it's your diary
it's the pictures
it's the tatting that great-grandma did
it's the furniture piece that you made
it's the fishing pole that you made
it's the the fancy quilt that mom made
these are the things that people fight over
they don't fight over the big-screen TV
my way, my credo is if you can buy it at Walmart
I don't care about it.
Very seldom does it have any inherent value
other than the monetary value of it
if you can buy the Walmart
and that's not kids are going to kill each other over.
So you need to get rid of these things
in order to avoid the fight
and that's where the fight comes
you need to make out wills you need to make out trusts
particularly if there are minors
children--you need to make sure that your kids
make out a will
that says who's going to raise the grandkids
after the kids get killed
because the family is going to fight over who raises the grandkids
and you're going to want to raise them
but the courts going to make that decision unless mom and dad nail it down
we've talked about that in other YouTube videos
so avoiding the family fights
you need to decide who gets the dollies and the doilies
make sure we don't go through probate, have that frustration
make sure that we can find the accounts and stuff
make a list of things
it's going to really help kids to make a list of the passwords and
though they're not going to fight over it but
the more time and frustration
that builds up
and the cost that builds up
just goes bonkers with the kids
I remember a case
there was a family--a family had a cabin
one of the kids wanted the cabin
and it was in probate
and it had been in probate for years
and the one son called a meeting on the cabin
all the other siblings showed up
for the meeting on the cabin
the kid pulled out a gun, killed them all
The whole family
gone
over a cabin.
The kid who did the killing
and he wasn't a kid he was a 50-something year-old man
he was killed by the cops as he was fleeing in another state
so the whole family was gone.
If mom and dad had avoided the probate
nailed down exactly who got it
maybe the son wouldn't have been as mad,
at least not mad at his siblings
he could have been mad at mom and dad.
but there's a big difference there.
They're dead.
So this is Lee Phillips and I'm talking about
how to avoid the family fights
after mom and dad or after you die
and leave things to the kids.