Am I Obligated to Share My Estate with My Step Kids?

Zander shops all the top term insurance companies to save you money. Get started at zander.com. My husband and I were in our 40s. We just got married last May, and we are having some challenges with deciding how we should handle our blended family estate planning. Essentially, he wants his seven children from his previous marriage plus my one child from my previous marriage to split everything that we have now and build together eight ways equally. And to me, it seems a little bit like that somewhat disinherits my one child because he has to share with the seven others. And so we're just looking for some advice as to what your thoughts are on blended family estate planning. Well, my first thought is, is that what you've discovered is what we most often see. It's hard. It's very hard. It's complicated because there's not a smooth one size fits all answer. It always helps me with these things and it helped me even, I mean, we're not a blended family, but it helped me when I was explaining our estate to our children. To first start off with, there's no ethical or moral rights that any of them have. It's your money and your husband's money that you both brought in and the money that you build from this point forward. And if you leave them zero, that's not traditional, but it's perfectly moral, perfectly ethical. Okay. And it helps me to just kind of take it all away from them to start with in my mind. And then when I start giving it back, it feels different. Right. And so instead of like, this is mine, it's mine, it's my rights. And man, you know, I had a good inheritance and then my mother got married and it got split seven ways and it's like, no, it wasn't yours. You little twerp. It was mine. How old are they? How old are the kids? Yours and his. So mine is the youngest. He's 10 and they go all the other seven, um, go up to 24 years in age. Okay. In my mind, first and foremost, then I would establish what happens while they're minors. Okay. Because I want to make sure my minor children are cared for if we both die in a car wreck today. Okay. That's paramount. And that could be a lump sum into a, a trust that's formed upon death of both of you. Okay. Um, statistically, you're not going to actually execute that boat. One or both of you will live till those children are grown. Okay. So statistically, you're not going to have that, but probability, but anyway, that I had, so if I set that up, I set that up differently than I would set it up for adult. There are basics. Every family needs food, shelter, transportation, and term life insurance. Term life is simple. If you pass away, it pays money to your family so they can keep paying the bills. Protecting the people you love is part of winning with money. And when you're ready to do that, go with who I trust Zander insurance, Zander shops, top companies to find the right coverage at the best price. And they've earned my recommendation for nearly 30 years, go to zander.com today. Now, when we get the generation to adults is when the question you ask and starts to come into play is what's fair. And you make a valid point that, you know, let's say for instance, you brought in even more the other day when you all got married than he did. I don't know. I haven't asked that yet. I will in a minute, but then you're so really your kid's getting the short end of that stick that, you know, your, your, your point is valid then. I think it is, but there's here, here's where my mind is. And I've never been in your situation. So I, I cannot claim to know for certainty what the answer is. So let me say that. But what my, my mind goes to how old are the kids? Because if the kids are home aged, the age where they're in the house, and the understanding is, I want these children to look at me like I'm, I'm their mom, like mom and dad. And we want that family unit to feel like a family unit. There's part of me where I go, okay, well, I no longer have one kid. Now I have eight. Yeah. And so that's where my husband's at with it. He feels like we are one family unit that we should treat all the children equally. So their mom's not in the picture and my ex-husband's not in the picture. So we're the only parents to these children. Oh yeah. Okay. Then you signed up for that. Yeah. That's what you signed up for when you got married then that makes sense. Okay. So Jade makes a valid point then, and your husband does too. So it's an interesting discussion though, because it's, um, there, there's not a, an absolute slap your hand on the table. This is dumb or this is smart kind of thing. Uh, it's just a, it's just kind of feeling it through to me. I'm going to draw a line between when they're minors and when they're not. Okay. When they're minors, absolutely. Your husband wins. Okay. Cause the, the babies at home need to be taken care of. And one of them doesn't need to get $300 sneakers. And the other one has holes in their shoes. They need to feel like they're equal. I mean, this is not, this is not, this is not Cinderella. Okay. With the, with the stepsisters and all that, you know, it's not that thing. And so, um, but, but once they're out of the house, which is really what we're probably dealing with, they're all grown. Then let me ask this, what, how much net worth did he bring to this equation? How much net worth did you bring to the equation? Great question. So he brought in about $400,000, 300,000 of that is equity in his property, which we are living in and paying down half a million dollar note together on. And then he had about a hundred thousand in his 401k. Um, and I have a, what's now a rental property that I brought into the marriage that has about 200,000 in equity. It's worth about half a million. The tenants are covering a hundred percent of my mortgage, property tax, et cetera. And then I had about 200,000 in 401k and my HYSA. And then when my husband retires in 10 years, he has a very juicy California pension for 30 years of service with one of our local. So your net worth were fairly similar. Yeah, we were pretty equal. I mean, it wasn't like one of you had $4 million and the other one had a hundred, you know? No. Yeah. And he does make a hundred thousand dollars more than me. Of course. Uh, there's one, you know, we have six kids in the house right now that are there. Hello. So the grocery bill is a lot more than just me and the one hiring Mary Poppins for this. He won't be making any more than we offset that. But yeah. Um, and so neither one of your spouses are involved. Ex spouse. No, correct. Yeah. So it's just the two of us and the kids. Us against the world. Okay. So fast forward. If, if our contributions given that your income is being offset by your childcare, by you being the child primary caregiver, um, and his income is, if your contributions are fairly equal coming in and your contributions are not that far apart. Um, really when we get into this, somebody's not making a million dollars a year and somebody making nothing. So we got a fairly equal contribution. I think you guys got married with young enough children that I'm going to drop my part. I'm just trying to think what I would do. I'm not, again, I'm, we started the conversation with, it's an interesting conversation. I'm probably going to go a little bit more on his direction because the kids are young and the contributions are fairly equal. Sure. Um, as they become adults and really as their children too, that's just a, just a, I'm just feeling this out though. I might, I might wake up in the morning with a different answer. So I'm not going to hold you. You know, don't slap your hand on the table and say, Dave Ramsey said, cause they were, if they were adult children, which two of them are, but if they were all adult, this would be a totally different conversation, I think, but there may be, but there's not enough net worth that it's, it's not that much money, even when it grows to it's going to grow equally. So, um, I mean, if it's 30 years from now, do I want the one child to get half and the other six get that? No, I don't. Not 30 years from now. Zander is the best place to find term life insurance to protect your family. Visit zander.com for quotes today.