What is the right time to settle the estate and what should be taken into account?
Those who are young do not think about succession. Nor does he who feels young. Whoever receives the first invitation to a Pro Senectute event should hurry up and start planning their estate. No matter how large one’s own fortune is – already or still is -, self-managed, given or inherited: Man or woman is well advised – alone or together – to determine what should be the one day, when it is not (no longer) possible to act. Be it for health reasons during his lifetime. Or because the final end is already ringing before the silver wedding anniversary is celebrated. The topic is omnipresent.
He who wants to be heard, should not remain silent
Surprisingly many people do not have a plan how they want to provide for themselves or if and how their loved ones will arrange their inheritance. To tackle the topic – for oneself, the children or (in-law) parents – is for many coupled with tough inner resistance. Excuses are easy: too early, too little, too complicated, too brisk, … The fatal consequence: the matter remains silent until death.
Is silence advisable? No. Many have a faint idea that there are in fact legal rules. They trust them. The law as a whole provides for balanced solutions with certain restrictions (protection of the compulsory portion). But that’s just it: Without a regulation of its own, the estate of the twenty-year-old bachelor is sheared over the same comb as that of the mother of four, the successful entrepreneur or the 90-year-old dementia sufferer. In individual cases this can lead to disturbing results such as long-term relationship damage as a typical side effect. It becomes especially challenging when a property is involved that was financed from different marriage pots (there are up to four of them) and has increased in value considerably. Even patchwork families that have grown (together) harmoniously are suddenly reminded, that they are not cut from the same cloth.
Preventing dissonance
Those who can, should create clear conditions as soon as possible. There is plenty of scope for individual design, at least more than is generally known. With the instruments such as pension mandates, gifts and loans (with effect already during one’s lifetime) as well as wills, marriage and inheritance contracts (in the event of death), many discordant notes can be avoided. Alone, like a conductor, these tools should be neatly adapted to the personal environment so that they harmonize at the right moment. Parents, partners and children can be included, but do not have to. The fear of committing oneself too early for something is unfounded. Many things can be changed at any time without much effort, often without the involvement of others. The precautionary mandate – which regulates who is to act and how if I am still alive but cannot (any longer) act myself – as well as the will – handwritten or notarized – are never set in stone.
Anyone who thinks they are safe today and does not want to regulate anything because the relationship with (step-)parents and (half-)siblings is good anyway, should critically ask themselves whether the same group of people has already had to experience a common inheritance. Those who can orientate themselves by a clean instruction – even on purely practical topics – are less exposed to the risk of discord. Those who finally take up the (taboo) topic and address it respectfully will certainly not reap scolding. Better to gently guide someone by the hand than to lead someone by the hand. The latter is to be avoided (and with punishment)!
By lic. iur. LL.M. Thomas Loher, Chairman of the Board of Directors FINAD AG
