Would that be love if the person with whom you share your life did not include you in their will?
Issues of inheritance can be both an emotional and a legal issue for the later-life wedders in whom the two have both accumulated assets and family connections. Recently, for example, a woman in her seventies who had immigrated to the United States to marry, found that when she was contributing two-thirds of the family cost, her husband was holding onto his most valuable asset-a plot of land then worth around $1.8 million -for some far-off child. Why? The child could keep the family name.
On paper, their division is fair: She has her own house, slightly larger than his; negotiated for lifetime occupancy of her apartment and right to half of her U.S. Social Security for her husband in the case that she passes away first. But the emotional dynamics are trickier. She resents it, wondering whether in a later-in-life marriage being left out of the spouse’s will is “normal” after she relocates her life to live with him.
Estate planners who work with late-life and second-marriage families say such scenarios are not at all unusual. Because marriage later in life often means each partner has pre-existing wealth, the desire to have property remain in one’s family can be strong. Especially if children or further-off relatives are in the picture, and one has good wishes for them. But without explicit understandings, these decisions may leave the survivor feeling out of the loop.
In cross-border marriages, the law comes into play: jurisdictions may recognize property regimes or prenuptial agreements that keep capital in separation, such as the French “séparation de biens” arrangement, which English courts have held binding where entered into fairly. For international, highly mobile couples everywhere, a choice-of-law clause in a marital agreement can say under whose laws inheritance and distribution of assets shall be governed, limiting the potential for conflict.
However, the affective impact cannot be addressed by legal terminology. It is the exclusionary emotions that will be apt to reverberate the so-called “narcissistic injuries” that psychologists identify as those wounds to one’s ego that one is valued. Left sitting, they will fester into bitterness. Relationship counselors advise starting with the creation of hurt, followed by creating dialogue centered on mutual knowledge and not blame. As Dr. Elliot Cohen advises, the other’s long-standing values or fears and not a desire to demote their partner could be accountable for what feels like a personal offense at first.
Financial equity in such partnerships is engendered through openness about the respective contributions. When one is contributing substantially more in the way of bringing in, creating proportionate cost sharing can be a help in correcting imbalance. For example, when one partner pays 66% toward living expenses, the other makes non-monetary forms such as cleaning or babysitting, openly acknowledged to be part of the partnership’s equity. The sting is somewhat softened when inheritances are kept separate.
Estate planners insist late-life and mixed marriage couples update their wills and trusts from time to time, especially following a significant life event. Instruments like life estates allow a surviving spouse to live on a property for life without technically owning the property. This technique satisfies the goal of giving a property to a partner while leaving assets to one’s own family. Trusts, on the other hand-such as QTIP trusts-allow for a spouse with the remaining principal being left to descend to children or other family members.
Confronting the emotional side means talking openly about why certain decisions are being made: upholding a family tradition, perhaps? Protecting the children from an ex-partner? Or maybe just carrying out the long-hatched plan? These conversations may be difficult, but sometimes what had been perceived as a snub can be rendered into a conscious choice-even if the ultimate outcome remains the same.
In the end, there’s no one “normal” when it comes to inheritance and delayed marriage. What matters most is that they both feel appreciated, their contributions appreciated, and their futures secure-that they may, or may not, have their names on each other’s deeds.
