Protecting Your Children’s Inheritance From Their Spouse

No one wants to imagine that their children will someday have to endure the pain of getting divorced. But unfortunately, this may happen.

One of the most challenging aspects of a divorce is the division of marital property. This is especially difficult whenever the divorcing couple’s separate and marital assets have been commingled.

If your child gets divorced, and his or her assets have been commingled with their spouse’s assets in this way, there is a very good chance that half of any inheritance you have left behind for them will walk out the door with his or her ex-spouse.

Most parents don’t realize that when they leave a child an unprotected inheritance, it may start out as his or her separate property, but can easily become commingled with their spouse’s property. Then if the couple divorces, your child will essentially have only two choices:

1. Hire an expensive forensic accountant to untangle his or her separate property from marital property; or
2. Lose half of their inheritance to their ex-spouse.

In either case, it’s probably not what you want to have happen, and will likely be a huge blow to your child financially.

Proper Estate Planning Can Protect Your Children’s Inheritance

Though you may have never thought about the importance of planning your estate to protect your heirs in the event of a future divorce, this is something that you can do for them that they cannot do for themselves. A smart way to protect your children’s inheritance from a future divorce is to work with a qualified estate planning attorney to create a Trust that will safeguard the assets you leave behind for them.

You can structure the Trust in a way that provides your children with access to the Trust funds, but limits their ownership of them. This will keep the Trust funds from ever becoming marital property.

You may also need to avoid providing regularly scheduled distributions to your children, as that money may be considered marital property as well. In other words, it may be wiser to have your adult children request funds from the Trustee who will be instructed to provide those funds only when certain conditions are met.

An Experienced Virginia Estate Planning Attorney Can Help

As with all estate planning matters, protecting an heir’s inheritance from a future divorce is complex, and must be done right. So, you should not attempt to do this without the assistance of an experienced professional.

Even the slightest oversight in this area can cause much of your hard-earned money to end up in the hands of your child’s ex-spouse. So, be sure to work with an experienced estate planning attorney, who can help you structure your estate legally and properly.

For help ensuring that a child’s ex-spouse doesn’t walk away with your money, call our law firm today at (703) 553-2577 or use the contact form on our website to arrange a consultation with an experienced Virginia estate planning attorney.

The information on this site is for general informational purposes only. The information presented in this site is not legal advice or a legal opinion. You should seek the advice of legal counsel of your choice before acting upon any of the information in this site.