Children From A Prior Marriage? Protect Your Life Insurance

It used to be that the traditional estate plan was the one where you had a married couple and all of the children were born of that one marriage. Today, it seems that the majority of estate plans involve spouses - and one or both of them have had children from a prior marriage.

Worked with a couple today. One of their main concerns was to protect the life insurance - and their estate - for (1) their surviving spouse; and then (2) for their respective children.

Here's the problem. Husband dies and leaves his $1,000,000 life insurance policy to his wife. After Husband dies, Mom applies for and receives a check for $1,000,000 from the life insurance company. When Mom later dies, she leaves this money - and the rest of her estate - to "her" children. Husband's children are left with zippo.

What the solution? Perhaps Husband should have left the life insurance to a trust. Wife could be the trustee of the trust and Wife could use the principal for her maintenance and support. But the trust would provide that when Wife later dies, the trust principal reverts back to Husband's children.

Want to know how to protect your estate for your children from a previous marriage, just send me an e-mail to paul@rabalaislaw.com, or give my office a call at 225-329-2450. Make sure you tell my law firm's receptionist that you read about this on my blog. Until next time...

Paul A. Rabalais