If you and your spouse are financially comfortable, you may have received the advice to share your inheritance plans with your children well in advance. At the same time, you may hesitate to divulge the extent of your assets. We found an article by Forbes on this topic interesting, and we wanted to share it with you and highlight some of the key points we thought could help guide your decisions about sharing estate planning information with your children.
During the estate planning process, many high-net couples wonder if sharing their financial information with their children early on will make their heirs lose motivation to work. If this is one of your concerns, keep in mind that cognitive decline is statistically likely, and you need to get away from the thinking that this could never happen to you.
When your capacity to think and communicate becomes impaired, it may be too late to explain your wishes to your heirs in the level of detail you want. For diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, which can last a long time, you want to make sure your heirs understand how to properly handle your estate, protecting your wealth as you age and then for future generations.
Ultimately, if you want your heirs to benefit from your estate planning efforts as you intend, you must make critical decisions about sharing this information with your children before age and other factors prohibit you from effectively relaying your wishes. In the end, think about what the outcome of not talking about your finances would look like and take steps to circumvent this potentiality from occurring.