If you are creating an estate plan, you may wonder whether or not to discuss it with your family.
Maybe you are worried a family member won’t like it when they find out someone else is due to get more than them. Perhaps you fear someone will become less motivated to earn their way once they learn they will inherit a considerable sum. Or maybe you just don’t like to talk about your finances.
Discussing your plan with your nearest and dearest has several advantages:
It reduces the chance of problems between family members
Let’s say you decide to give one child much more than the other. Any child would be hurt to discover this when you die. If you explain your reasoning now, it helps them understand. Even if they disagree, they should hopefully feel less upset than if they never knew why.
It allows you to take people’s preferences into account
You decide to leave Grandma’s crockery collection to your daughter. You remember she used to play with it as a kid. What you don’t know is that to this day, she remembers Grandma shouting at her when she smashed one of the bowls. You think you are bequeathing happy memories. She considers them traumatic.
Above all, talking to your family helps them be prepared for when you die. Rather than rooting around to see if you had an estate plan, they can go straight to it and implement things as you would have wished.