Tips for Keeping Your Family Civil About Your Possessions After You Die

The death of a beloved relative should be a time when families come together to support and love each other. Unfortunately, all too often, this instead becomes a time when families fight and split apart. If you want to help prevent that from happening to your family after you pass away, it's important to put plans in place to help keep things civil.

Give Away as Much as Possible

One simple way to reduce problems after you're gone is to give away your possessions before you're gone. If you have certain family members who you want to receive certain possessions, you can give them your possessions so that they can decide what they want to do with them. In addition to ensuring that your possessions end up in the right hands, this leaves fewer possessions to end up in limbo when you no longer have a say.

Create an Airtight Will

Most people understand the importance of creating a will. Unfortunately, many people go about creating their will in ways that don't hold up to legal scrutiny when the time comes. To help keep everyone in line, it pays to have a will attorney assist you with the creation of your will so that there are no discrepancies for your family to work through. While disputes may still occur, they will be easier to squash with the legal authority of a fine-tuned will.

Have an Honest Conversation

While talking through your death with your family isn't the most compelling Thanksgiving-table conversation, it may be something that you need to do if you're worried about infighting after you're gone. If you share from your heart why you want certain things to be done in certain ways, your family is more likely to honor those wishes when your time comes. Recording this conversation and giving it to the executor of your estate can help if anyone decides they want to back out of what they previously agreed to.

Designate a Non-Profit

If you don't see a path for family harmony after you're gone, it may be better to bequeath your estate to one or more non-profit organizations so that your family has nothing to fight over. As long as it's set up correctly, including a non-profit in your estate plan allows attorneys for those non-profits to get involved in the process if your family members try to dispute your plans. This makes it more likely that your assets will end up in good hands.

It can be disheartening to deal with a hard-hearted family member when thinking through your final plans. The key, though, is to stick with the difficult family members who could cause trouble after you're gone. Although back-up plans are good to have in case everything falls apart, by working to change your family members' attitudes, you may win the respect of those family members and secure peace when you're no longer around.