Other Considerations
"If you're going to make unequal dispositions, you should realize the possibility of a challenge down the road and do what you can to avoid that," DeMaio says.
How can a challenge be avoided? DeMaio says one choice is for parents to let the children know ahead of time what you're providing and why. If the parents prefer not to do that, they could write a letter separate from the will explaining their decisions. It's important the parents make sure there are no conflicts of interest. For example, there could be a conflict of interest if the attorney who drafts the will is introduced to the parents by the child who inherits most of the estate, he says.
Stokes agrees a person should be clear about his or her intentions. He has seen situations in Florida in which a mother has all or most of her money in CDs and other bank accounts in joint ownership with a daughter who lives near her. Her will, however, divides her estate between that daughter and another daughter who lives in New York.
"Mom dies, all the CDs by operation of law go to the sister here, and under the will, the sister in New York gets half of nothing. So she comes screaming down saying: 'It's obvious Mom wanted me to have half of everything because she wouldn't have written the will the way she did.'
"Often, the mother and daughter here will do that so if Mom gets sick, the daughter can access the CDs and the bank account, and that's what the sister up north says, 'Mom only did that for convenience purposes,' and the sister down here says, 'No she didn't. She did it because I was taking care of her.' "
Stokes says if a parent is going to do that, she should make it clear in her will that she has some of her accounts in joint name with one daughter and means for her to get that money. "If I get her in my office, I don't do that to take care of disability issues. I use revocable trusts. This happens with some people because they kind of do it themselves. They talk to some bank officer, who says, 'Why don't you put your assets in joint name with your daughter here?' There's a lot of cases in Florida where these two sisters have fought it out."