Parents contemplating their own deaths commonly stipulate in their wills that most/all of their estate be left to their kids.
There are plenty of us that have no kids. What do you want to happen to your estate after you die?
My wife and I have no kids and don’t expect to. We don’t, at present, have a will, and it’s probably about time to make one. Not sure what to put in it.
We have one daughter, but I have considered what we should do if she should die before we do. At one point, I considered one nephew as the ideal candidate, but he’s taken himself out of the running with his behavior and life choices of late. The other nephew hardly speaks to us, but leaving everything to his sister would not be very nice.
So I’m inclined to give the heirloom-ish items to sibs or the niece/nephews and have the bulk of the estate sold off for a couple of charities. I expect the local women’s shelter and animal rescue group would be glad for a cash infusion.
Estate? If I’m lucky enough to retire with any cash, I expect to spend every last cent of it before I die.
Assuming that by “estate” you mean, “I own my home and have a comfortable amount of money in the bank,” I’d try to find some local non-profit that provides homes for people who are down on their luck and leave it all to them.
My wife and I have no kids. 3 of 4 of our parents are deceased and the last is quite elderly. But we do have brothers and sisters and they have kids, most of whom are now young adults.
So both our wills give the assets to the surviving spouse first. If he/she is deceased also, then to a trust which will disburse the funds to the surviving brothers, sisters, and their kids = our nieces / nephews.
I’m going to take it with me.
By “estate” I mean the sum total of your earthly possessions, whatever their total value might be. real estate, cash, stocks, bonds, banana slicers, cars, and so on.
LIke you, I hope to spend damn near all of my nest egg enjoying a comfortable retirement. But what if you die tomorrow in a car crash, i.e. while your net worth is substantially non-zero?
Well, if this were a Wodehouse novel, you’d have a niece or nephew who could use a nice windfall.
Ours will be put in trust for our (currently) minor nephew, or go directly to him if he is over the age of 25.
We plan to live comfortably in our retirement, but if we die young he could get a substantial windfall.
In my case I checked and what happens to my estate by law is exactly what I would want to happen if I wrote a will. My heirs are my brothers, equal parts. If either of them predeceases me and has children, then the children become my heirs (equal parts of his part).
I’m considering writing a will to make the paperwork easier. But once I sit down with a lawyer, all the will will say is where to find my passwords, a request for the Bros to offer any mandas they consider appropriate (a manda is properly speaking an item set aside in the will for a specific person, but the term is also used for things that are offered to someone by the heirs because they think that person will appreciate it), and state that they are my universal heirs in equal parts and that if either of them predeceases me and has children, his children inherit that part in equal parts whether they were born/wholly adopted at the time of death or not. One of the Bros currently has two kids, the other one is involved in an adoption process.
I don’t care.
Nieces and nephews for us.
I have two nieces, so they win.
If I were to kick it right now, my folks would get my earthly possessions and would pass them along to my brother, who would most likely set his family up here in my house (I’ve got some equity) and that’d be cool with me.
Well, I have 2 small children, so the question is mostly hypothetical for me.
There are really 2 hypothetical situations here:
I did get married, we just didn’t have kids. In this case, we’d leave it to our nieces and nephews, I suspect. Maybe as some kind of trust. Or, I suppose, to our siblings’ families as a whole, if either of them was financially struggling (which they’re not, AFAIK).
I didn’t get married. I’d probably leave it to my parents/brother, or potentially to any children of my brother as a trust, with some sort of codicil to donate it to some combination of medical research charities if my brother never ends up having kids.
We have a couple younger cousins we’re very close to. They have the job of cleaning up after we’re gone and they get the leftovers. They know our friends and our families and we trust their judgement and our wills reflect that.
I’m the oldest of six siblings, and have 11 grand-nephews and nieces and 5 great-grand-nephews and nieces. It will go to my sibs or their heirs.
I have no children. I have one older brother, whom I will probably outlive. He has no children. I’m not close to my cousins.
So yeah, this is an issue for me. If I do nothing, my assets will be split eight ways among my cousins’ children, whom I barely know. Or I can make out a will and designate some charities. That will piss off my cousins’ kids but so what. The problem is, I find it hard to care about what happens after I’m dead.
I doubt that I will have much of an estate, but in the unlikely event that I do, I’d probably leave some of it for study-abroad scholarships at my university (or some other fairly specific area where I could do some good without being insanely wealthy) and the rest to my nephews.
I plan to give it all to the egg marketing board. Eggs have gotten such a bad rap nowadays.
Upon my death, all of my belongings shall transfer to the man or animal who has killed me.