Most families have more than one estate plan in play at any given time. Almost none of them have been looked at together.
Your parents made theirs in a different decade, with a different attorney, under a different set of tax rules, on the basis of a family that looked somewhat different than it does now. You made yours later, on your own terms, without much reference to theirs.
The difficulty is not in either plan. It is at the seam, in the assumptions each one makes about the other, that no one has ever checked, because there has never been an obvious moment to do so.
That seam is where a modest amount of attention tends to go the furthest.
Where Two Plans Touch
The same person, carrying several roles at once.
Adult children are frequently named across both generations’ plans — as a successor trustee in one, an agent in another, and a personal representative in a third. Each appointment was reasonable when it was made, and each was made without visibility into the others.
The question is not whether the right person was chosen. It is what happens if more than one of those roles activates in the same season. A plan that assumes a fiduciary will have capacity has made a real assumption, and it is one that neither plan alone can evaluate.
An inheritance arriving in a structure that was not built to receive it.
A plan designed to distribute wealth outward is a different object from a plan designed to receive it. Yours was probably built for the first.
When a meaningful inheritance arrives, it can land in a way that changes the arithmetic your own plan was calibrated to — a distribution formula written for one balance sheet, a structure with tax consequences that were sound before the inflow and less so afterward, or an outright receipt where a different form of receipt would have served the next generation better. The inheritance is welcome. The plan simply was not written with it in view.
Timing that no one coordinated because no one could.
Neither generation controls when their plan takes effect. But both generations control what they assume about sequence, and those assumptions are frequently unexamined. A parent’s plan may assume that a child will be established and available. A child’s plan may assume that a parent’s estate will settle before certain obligations arrive. Both can be right. Both can also be wrong at the same time, in a way that is only visible when the two plans are set side by side.
A parent’s plan that assumes availability.
Many plans made a quiet assumption about geography that was accurate at the time. Adult children live somewhere else now more often than they used to. A plan that assumed proximity, and the practical capacity that goes with it, may need something other than what it was given.
When the Two Plans Sit in Different Jurisdictions
This is where the seam widens.
Families with international dimensions frequently have plans made in more than one country, or made in one country by people whose circumstances have since become connected to another. A parent who lives abroad, a parent who is not a U.S. person, a child who is, an inheritance moving across a border, or property held where it sits rather than where the family lives — each introduces considerations that neither plan was necessarily designed to address.
Cross-border inheritance in particular tends to raise questions that neither generation’s attorney was asked. What one jurisdiction treats as a straightforward transfer, another may treat as a reportable event with its own timing and its own consequences. What a foreign plan calls a trust may not be the thing a U.S. adviser means by the word.
These are not obstacles so much as things that benefit from being known in advance. They are considerably easier to address while both plans are still adjustable.
What Coordination Actually Means
It does not mean merging the plans, and it does not mean anyone reading anyone else’s documents.
It means testing the assumptions each plan makes about the other, which is a narrower and more manageable exercise than it sounds. In practice it tends to involve a small number of questions:
- Which people appear in both plans, in which roles, and what happens if two of those roles activate at once
- Whether either plan assumes something about the other generation’s geography, availability, or financial position that is no longer accurate
- Whether an inheritance, if it arrives, lands somewhere the receiving plan is prepared for
- Whether either generation’s plan crosses a jurisdiction the other one does not account for
- Whether both generations understand the shape of what is coming, at the level of structure rather than amounts
That last one is often the whole exercise. Families are frequently more willing to have this conversation than either generation assumes. What stops it is usually the belief that the conversation has to be about numbers, when the useful version is about structure and sequence.
One Matter That Belongs Elsewhere
If anyone in either generation relies on needs-based public benefits, or may come to, the coordination question changes character entirely. Distributions and inheritances can affect eligibility in ways that are specific, technical, and time-sensitive, and this is genuinely specialized work. Families in that situation are best served by an attorney who practices in that area, and we are glad to point you toward one.
The Window is While Both Plans are Adjustable
Coordination is available for exactly as long as both generations can still make changes. After that, whatever the two plans assumed about each other becomes fixed, and the work shifts from design to accommodation.
That is the practical argument for treating this as its own question rather than something that will surface on its own. It generally does not surface on its own. It surfaces at the moment one of the plans is put to use, which is the point at which nothing further can be adjusted.
Looking at two plans together is a modest undertaking. It tends to produce a short list rather than a long one. But the items on that list are usually the kind that are simple to address now and expensive to address later.
Have Your Family’s Plans Ever Been Looked at Together?
The Law Office of Janet L. Brewer works with individuals and families whose circumstances have more to consider than the surface suggests, including families whose planning spans generations and jurisdictions. Every engagement begins with a Right Fit Conversation — a focused, paid discussion in which your situation and the practice are evaluated together. If it is a fit, you will know what comes next. If it is not, we will tell you honestly, and often point you toward an attorney who is a better match.
Call the office at (650) 325-8276 or visit https://www.calprobate.com/contact-us/ to begin.
