North Fulton Living Magazine and Cobb Living Magazine – November, 2003

Get ready baby boomers. Over the next few decades you will inherit trillions of dollars — $10.4 trillion to be precise, according to a 1993 Cornell University study. As Depression-era investors pass away, their children stand to benefit from an “inheritance boom” that reflects the fact that more than half of all wealth in the United States is held by people over the age of 55 — 37% of the population.

But along with their inheritances, baby boomers are seeing more family infighting over the money and possessions that their loved ones left behind. With the uncertainty of the economy, children attending college, the rising cost of health care, and the hope for a comfortable retirement, money is very much on the minds of boomers. Baby boomers have a different attitude toward money than their parents. They have more debt than the previous generation, and many are relying on inheritances to ease the load. As a result, baby boomers are well behind their parents in accumulated wealth and many will retire with less than half the relative wealth that their parents had at a similar age. In addition, over the last two decades family relationships have become much more complicated as a result of the ever-increasing number of remarriages and blended families.

Because of these factors, family conflicts over inheritances are inevitable. In fact, nearly one third of all boomers have already been involved in a dispute over an inheritance, and many more, it seems, are looming just over the horizon. In my own law practice specializing in estate and trust litigation, I have seen a profound and steady increase in the number of estate disputes in the last decade. Unfortunately, only a small number of older Americans have an effective, well thought out estate plan. This obviously complicates matters for the family, and even when parents have a will, the potential for conflict is very high. Second marriage situations, disinheriting a child, favoring one child over another, transition of family and closely held businesses to the next generation, and children born out of wedlock all are common estate issues that are at the heart of many of the disputes our clients face. These situations often set off a dispute that will literally tear a family apart. Ironically, some of the ugliest family disputes, regardless of the size of the estate, are over personal property. I have seen families spend tens of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees fighting over possessions with lots of sentimental value but very little monetary value.

Lawyers and financial planners have traditionally focused primarily on the financial and legal details of dividing the estate, often ignoring the more emotional issues that families in transition face. Today however, ignoring issues like how to divide your estate among a second spouse and children from a previous marriage, or who the best choice is to effectively and honestly manage your estate or a trust set up for a spouse or minor children, can lead to disaster, destroying not only your carefully crafted estate plan, but your family as well. Estate planners and lawyers like myself have had to learn to deal with the profound emotional component of these situations, as well as the complicated legal and financial matters that accompany estate and trust disputes.

After nearly 20 years in practice, I have found that it is far easier to avoid a dispute than to resolve one after family members have started suing one another. Its not enough anymore to just do a will. Rather, the goal should be to recognize the potential problems that cause families to fight and try to plan around them. To do otherwise is to tell your heirs that you would like them to litigate with each other before they receive what’s left of their inheritance. We regularly have clients who come to us looking for legal recourse, only to learn that they might be facing years (and sometimes decades) of protracted litigation. We work to recognize the family’s concerns and seek a resolution. While we have litigated over hundreds of estates, we try to help clients understand the emotional and financial strain of litigation, and we assist them in finding additional avenues to resolve their disputes.

In my practice, we have seen every imaginable kind of family estate dispute, and while some could not be anticipated or avoided, many more could have been. Our philosophy in practice is geared toward helping families resolve estate disputes once they arise in the least destructive way possible, however, my personal goal is to keep these disputes from arising at all. Although some family feuds over estates may be inevitable, there are ways to make them less contentious — and perhaps, through good planning, to even head them off before the loss of a parent or loved one.