It is not all that unusual for a child to not live up to the expectations of parents. Sometimes parents will be so disappointed when that happens, that they will attempt to cut the child out of their estate plans. They might want to reconsider.
Wealthy parents often have extremely high expectations for their children. They want their children to go to school, get a good job, raise a family and do all of the things that made the parents so successful.
However, sometimes a child just does not live up to those expectations.
Sometimes there is a black sheep who does everything the parents would not want him or her to do.
If the problems are severe enough, then the parents might even stop contact with the child and seek to cut him or her out of their estates.
The latter is often a bad idea, as the Globe and Mail discusses in “Think twice, wealthy family, before cutting the black sheep out of your will.”
One big thing to consider is that a child who receives nothing has no incentive to not cause problems.
A no-contest clause can prevent someone who does receive an inheritance from challenging an estate plan that they do not like, but it cannot prevent someone from doing so who is set to receive nothing or very little from an estate.
This can make cutting a child out of an estate plan a very expensive proposition. This is because the child has no reason to not launch legal fights.
A black sheep child can also be more easily controlled by using an estate plan to incentivize that child into desired behaviors.
An estate planning attorney can help you create a trust, for example, that only distributes money to the child when certain actions are taken by the child.
Reference: Globe and Mail (Sep. 19, 2017) “Think twice, wealthy family, before cutting the black sheep out of your will.”
