Over tea this morning Jim’s spouse Susan broadly shared with us her concern of how messy and drawn-out it might be for her personally to dispose of the U.S. property in the event Jim dies before her. Their adult kids want nothing to do with the condo, don’t want to travel to the U.S., and wonder why their parents continue to own instead of lease.
Jim handles the finances and is a strong and silent type. He jokes with me he is immortal because he has no concrete plans of dying. (wtf?..). In his mind, Susan is concerned over nothing because his will transfers everything to her upon his death. Jim changes the subject when Susan asks about the future of the condo. She doesn’t want the stress of settling the disposition in his absence.
Questions:
In your experience,
1)how common is this situation?
2)is there anything Jim (and people in his situation) commonly overlook in this simple plan?
We often see as families start to age that thinking and talking about the estate starts to increase in importance and rightfully so. This type of scenario is not uncommon but of course varies depending on the family situation. What we often see is one family member is typically the one that manages the finances and investing and concerns grow around what happens if they become incapable to manage it going forward, the other half is left not knowing what to do during what is already a stressful time. So, making plans to simplify that situation start to become a focus.
Most people seem to be aware of the pros and cons in these situations, but maybe what gets overlooked or can't be known, is the stress dealing with it for families that it can add but also a bit of a monetary weight as there are costs that are carried even as a sale process carries out and/or legal types of fees eating away at assets as everything gets sorted out. In these situations, from the family perspective, you are also not operating on a strong footing so the end decisions that get made can sometimes be sub-optimal, like selling a property at a discount because you just want to be 'done' with it.