Blended family
Protecting your spouse and your children from a prior marriage at the same time.
The mistake that disinherits children from your first marriage — and the standard fix that lets you support your current spouse without losing the kids' inheritance.
What matters in your case
Get these four things right.
Don't leave everything to your new spouse
Without a structure, anything that becomes theirs at your death is theirs to leave to whomever they want — including a future spouse, or just their own kids.
QTIP trust as a balance
A QTIP gives your spouse income for life but locks in your children as the ultimate beneficiaries. Used for centuries in second-marriage estate planning.
Separate retirement-account designations
If your retirement accounts are 100% to your spouse, your children may receive nothing. Consider naming the QTIP trust as a partial beneficiary.
Talk to the kids
Surprises in a will are how blended families end up in court. The conversation is uncomfortable; the lawsuit is worse.
The longer answer
Blended-family estate planning isn't about distrust. It's about acknowledging that 'all to my spouse' transfers control completely — and once you're gone, control determines outcome. Your spouse may have every intention of providing for your kids and still find themselves needing the money for a medical event, or remarrying, or simply changing their mind a decade later.
The standard tool is a QTIP trust (Qualified Terminable Interest Property). Plain English: a trust that pays your surviving spouse income for life, but the principal — the actual assets — pass to your kids when the surviving spouse dies. Your spouse is supported. Your kids are not disinherited. The trust does both at once.
A simpler alternative is to leave specific assets directly to children at your death (life insurance, a retirement account, a portion of investments) while leaving the home and remaining accounts to your spouse outright. Less elegant than a QTIP but doesn't require ongoing trust administration.
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