I guess that's where depending on who is alive and the relationship you have with people in your lives, each situation could be dramatically different.
My parents are (EDIT) not wealthy money wise, but after I left home they set up a trust (keep the money out of the governments hands LOL). Mom passed 18 years ago, and dads pushing 90, but the one thing we didn't have figured out was his vehicle. He bought the car when he wasn't living with us, bought it in NC but he was still living in Pa at the time. Then when he moved in with us a couple of years ago (ensuring the trust was legal and above board in NC was interesting enough), we recently found out that he (or we LOL) forgot to transfer the cars Pa title to NC, which we had to do. That's why after my wife just went through the last couple of months with her father's probate and transfering everything per ownerhsip to her mother, she asked to to see if the court house would put my fathers name and my name on the title. This type of registration and title ownership fits our situation perfectly.
Getting off track which I've been known to do....
I was pretty stupid as a young adult sometimes. When I was traveling and working and living in different states, because I was single and had no siblings, I just assumed that if anything were to happen to me where I was no longer living, my parents would just inherit all of my assets. Depending on the state of your residence, that is not always correct. My incorrect assumption was that most children have a good relationship with their parents and trust them. Then on the flip side, if your parents, I've come to the conclusion that you can take 4 kids raised in the same family environment with the same family values and rules, and there may be a couple of adult children you know the money is just going to be pissed away if they get anything, and I've seen that happen in my own extensive family.
When we first made out our will, we had a bunch of things put in there as to when the kids would get the money if we died, depending on their ages (they were minors at the time), their schooling, their jobs, etc... several other stipulations. It all made perfect sense to us. We wanted to protect the investments and wanted them to get the investments as we saw fit and spend it on things that we thought were important.
Our lawyer gave us this advice:
If you try to control your kids from the grave, they'll only resent you for it.
So we set up the will like this.
If I die my wife gets everything.
If my wife dies I get everything.
If we both die, the minor children split everything 50/50.
They'll live with XXXX (and aunt and uncle, in our situation) until they are at least 18.
XXXX become their legal guardians.
XXXX will use the investments for room, board and education as they see fit, for the kids through college or age 22, which ever comes first.
When the youngest turns 22, all of the estate that is remaining is split 50/50 between the kids.
If 1 of the kids dies, the remaining gets 100%
If both die, the estate gets split evenly between my wife and my siblings.
The end.
Of course, you have to trust XXXX will do the right and responsible thing for your kids. Room, board and education is quite a broad brush. However, we saw XXXX raise their kids and trusted that they'd do similar with ours.
Fortunately, wife and I are still alive and kids are now 23 and 28. So we changed the will so that:
I croak wife gets 100%.
Wife croaks I get 100%.
Both of us croak, kids split 50/50.
1 kid croaks, other kid gets 100%.
Both kids croak, 100% is split evenly between wife and my siblings.
The end.
