If you have a mortgage, you might worry about what that means for your heirs and loved ones. Will they be able to keep your home, and who will be responsible for paying for it?
While the tasks of dealing with an estate after someone passes may be simple administration, the work associated with it is often quite complicated.
When you’re planning to divide your estate unequally, explain the reasons to your heirs, and remember: They might be hurt anyway.
As if losing a loved one weren’t hard enough, you might also have to add ‘death tax’ on the property that you receive from the estate—depending on where you live—in addition to all the other costs of death.
If you get bogged down with a high balance that you can’t easily afford to pay off, it can take years to get out of debt. However, what happens to your credit card debt, if you die before you’ve repaid it?
After a loved one passes, one of the biggest hurdles families face is passing wealth onto the next generation. Unfortunately, family dynamics can spur conflict and infighting among descendants.
Sometimes beneficiaries end up not receiving their assets. Beneficiaries often lose out because the estate planning wasn’t done properly, but sometimes another family member contests the decedent’s will.
So, you’ve decided that a family member won’t be getting an inheritance, after all. Maybe you have an ungrateful or irresponsible family member you want to cut out of the will.
When the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso died of a heart attack on April 8, 1973, he left behind not only a huge artistic oeuvre of 50,000 works, but enough family drama to cover several generations.