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Chapter 14: Married...With or Without Children
Most of Us Want to See That Our Spouse Is Taken Care of, but How?
This chapter discusses the most common estate planning situations: those involving a married couple. How can you use the basic tools of estate planning to fit your particular needs?
While no two marriages are alike, most married couples share some basic estate planning needs, some of which are outlined below. Whats more critical than the specifics that appear here, however, is that you discuss these matters with your partner.
Often, couples will arrive at a lawyers office only to discover that they have different fears and desires about where their money should go after they die. The husband might want some of his property to go to the couples grown children, to help them get started in life. The wife, on the other hand, might see the limited job market for herself and want more of his money to go to support her. These are intimate matters that will have to be hammered out between you and your partner--preferably before you talk to a lawyer.
Many married couples with modest estates (and that’s by far the majority of them) will execute simple wills in which each partner leaves everything to the surviving spouse. This is especially true if the couple is past the prime earning years or if one of them has depended on the other for support, and the children are grown and earning money.
However, even couples with modest estates should consider estate plans centered around living trusts. As noted earlier, advantages of such revocable trusts include protection for your assets in the event that you are disabled, as well as probate avoidance and privacy. Such plans may utilize a joint trust for the couple, or a separate trust for each spouse.
A married couple’s estate plan will usually change over time: they accumulate more assets, children are born and then leave the household, and the chances diminish that one spouse will long outlive the other. Here are some considerations for both young and middle-aged couples, assuming that one or both spouses work outside the home and that together they have a middle-class income.