How do you most fairly treat an irresponsible adult child in the estate planning process?

Hello, my name is Ron Blue, and one of the most difficult things we have to do as we get older in life, and we think about our wills, and as our children are growing up, is how we are going to handle whatever it is that God has entrusted to us in the event that we die – and, in fact, that will happen. So, how do I decide how much to give to each child?

Well, we had a principle, and that was that if you love your children equally, you would treat them uniquely. So we began with that question or that point, and looked at each of our children and asked three questions:

1. “If I leave X amount of money to X child, what’s the worst thing that can happen?”
2. The second question then is, “how serious is that?”
3. The third question is, “how likely is that to occur?”

Now, if you’ve got a child who is irresponsible, the really difficult decision you’ve got to make is whether to leave any of God’s resources to that irresponsible child. You see, my paradigm changes when I begin to think of them as God’s resources - He has entrusted it to me, and He has given me the responsibility and the opportunity and the privilege to decide who the next steward is. Well, if I’ve got an irresponsible child, I have to ask the question: “What is the worst thing that could happen, how serious is it, and how likely is it to occur?”

There are many things that you can do. One is, of course, you could not leave an amount of money to an irresponsible child. I don’t always recommend that, but that’s certainly a very legitimate choice when you are dealing with God’s resources.

But, another thing that you can do is that you can set up a trust that is managed by someone else. I will never forget one of the men who worked for me many, many years ago: he told his oldest boy, who was the second child, that he had better be nice to his sister, who was the oldest child, because she was going to be managing all of his money, because he was not responsible with money. And that sent a signal. He became responsible, and very successful. But, the father had thought this thing through, and if this child did not demonstrate responsibility, he wasn’t going to allocate some of God’s resources to him to spend indiscriminately. That is a way to deal with it, also.

But I think the biggest thing you can do is pray, pray, pray. Pray for supernatural wisdom, because this is a difficult choice. And you need God the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart when you make that choice.

Click here for the June 26, 2009 Blog Entry