Bay Area Estates and Tax Law Blog

Divorce is more common than it was years ago, and so there are more blended families in the United States these days. After all, many people choose to remarry after a divorce, and that often means bringing children from a previous marriage into a newly blended family.

This blending can create a situation where there are step siblings and step parents who are both part of an estate plan. When one of the parents in a blended family dies, there are commonly disputes between the surviving spouse and the children of the deceased.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

That is the aural imagery advanced in a recent Forbes piece with a “what might go wrong” perspective on estate planning, especially concerning the individuals empowered to act on behalf of a planner.

Glen Campbell unquestionably lived large, having a life that fully justifies the many biographies that will certainly surface in the wake of his recent death. The singer/guitarist was a music legend with a broad-based entertainment career spanning decades.

As to his mention in an estate planning legal blog, it bears noting that Campbell married multiple times and fathered many children. Readers of our posts at the Bay Area Law Offices of Connie YI will perhaps not be overly surprised to hear that his active and frenetic family life -- coupled with his well-publicized battle with Alzheimer’s disease during the final years of his life -- has led to litigation-linked news following his death.

Your parent, nearing the end of his or her life, suddenly has a new love interest. The person is far younger than your parent, and you feel skeptical. That is confirmed when you meet the person and spend time with the two of them together. It seems clear to you that the younger person just found out about your parent's net worth and is attempting to work his or her way into the will.

Or, perhaps one of your siblings moves closer to home as your parents get older, after having been away for decades. Their relationship seems to flourish. You feel happy about it at first, but then you overhear some conversations about their estate plan when you go home to visit. It seems like the sibling who moved back is working on getting a larger share than you.