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Leaving an Inheritance
How to Provide for Your Grandchildren in Your Will By Sue Marquette Poremba
"You want to avoid any ambiguity in the language," says George Cassar, an estate planning attorney with Maddin Hauser Wartell Roth & Heller PC in Southfield, Mich. "You need to be very clear and straightforward."
The grandparent should firmly state his intentions. For example, the grandchildren's portion of the estate could be left only to all grandchildren alive at the time of the grandparent's death. Or the grandchildren could be named specifically. If the grandparent wants to leave a legacy to unborn grandchildren, that, too, can be specified.
However, says Brette Sember, author of Seniors' Rights: Your Legal Guide to Living Life to the Fullest (Sourcebooks, 2004), stepgrandchildren are not legally considered grandchildren unless they are legally adopted by your child. "If you want to leave something to them [stepgrandchildren], all you have to do is specify what and to whom," Sember says. "It's like leaving a bequest to anyone."
same assessments as the estate tax. The skipping tax comes into play when a generation is skipped, such as a grandparent leaving money to a grandchild but not to the parent in between. If the estate is large, grandparents may want to consider other options for their grandchildren, says Todd Simpson, a former trust officer who is now an attorney at the Michigan-based firm Warner Norcross & Judd LLP.
