The idea may seem unbelievable to most parents, but there are times when they might want to cut a child out of their will, say two attorneys who specialize in family law.
“No parent should undertake this lightly, but I have seen a number of scenarios where it was warranted,” says William W. Sleeth III of LeClairRyan in Williamsburg, Va.
Both Sleeth and Michael A. Mosberg of Aronson Mayefsky & Sloan in New York City say that a family’s financial advisor should be intimately involved in such decisions, along with a trusts and estates lawyer, in making sure a disinheritance is done the right way.
“I represented a woman whose son treated her and his wife poorly,” Sleeth says. “The mother disinherited the son and left her money to the daughter-in-law so that she and the grandchildren would be taken care of.
“In another case, a sibling shot, but did not kill, another sibling,” he says. “The parent was never able to forgive the one sibling and left the money to the sibling who was shot. There are also cases of fraud or neglect where a parent doesn’t want to leave hard-earned money to a child. It happens more often than you think.”
Mosberg adds, “There could be substance abuse involved; maybe one child is more responsible with money than another, or maybe one child is successful and is already well off. There are a mix of reasons it could happen.”
For the most part, no law requires a parent to leave money to a child. If a parent is writing a will, or a will and trust, he or she can say what he or she wants. “It is as simple as that,” says Sleeth.
But problems can arise when a parent wants to change a will that is already in place.
“It is a good idea to put the reason why someone is being left out in the new documents,” Sleeth says. “It is also good to talk to a trusted friend or confidant or a financial advisor about the situation over a period of time. If there is a problem down the road, the person can testify to why the parent made the change.”
Other measures are available besides outright disinheritance, says Mosberg. A trust can control when and how a child receives money. But if disinheritance is the intent, all documents need to specify that the parent is not making a provision for a particular child.