ole joyful here again ... whose life insurance matured at 80 and he collected it. He celebrated his 96th birthday last week. It was my turn to take sweets to the old guys' coffee hour at church ... and the minister brought a layer cake for my birthday (second oldest member). Renting what was my step-uncle's farnhouse about 6+ miles from nearby village and 12+ - 15 or so miles from city, my car was broken beyond being repairable over 3 years ago and lost licence 2 years ago. Hitchhike to village, bus to town. More than half of people giving rides are older females, some gave me numbers, offer to drive me. Friends said move to town, I like it here but soon health may require it, so am uncluttering house aiming for an apt. and hugely thankful that I can afford 2 - 3 times the rent - for 10 - 15 years or so, and starting from 96, that seems a reasonable timeframe. Good wishes to all of you for the year ahead - hope we can add a bit to helping our world become a better place for coming generations - says he, with a male and female offspring, but lacking ggrgragrangrandgrandkgrandkigrandkidgrandkids grandkids. ole joyful p.s. trying to make amendmeamendments here can be a pain in the butt, when the editors get their additions put in! o j

I am in 50 and my DH will be 60 this spring and retire. He has three adult children and I have none. As for our house, we are tenants in common. When we got together, I had my own money, so I paid half of the cost of building our new house. I pay 50% of the property tax and the house insurance. My DH pays for our living. I contribute to the cost of our outings, gift for his family & friends, and pay all my spending (car, gas & insurance, clothing and so forth). We wrote our wills a couple of years ago, as we believed that will was not for when we get older and (maybe) get sick, but for unexpected death at any age, especially when you have some asset and complicated family situation. Will definitely reduces irrelevant aggravation and emotional conflict among love ones. I am from a split family and we, siblings, had a heck of an emotional roller coaster when my parents passed away in 2 consecutive years, as neither of my parents had prepared their will. When my mother was in a hospice dying from cancer, my three older siblings decided to get adopted by my mother so that they could be eligible for inheritance from her. It was a very painful procedure to go through (literally, my mother had to sign on pages and pages of forms in her bed....). My younger brother and I were very upset. However, as every children were involved in the family business and the assets were somewhat related, it was unavoidable to go through this hell to keep peace in our family future. My DH willed 1/2 of our house and his entire asset to his three children. I can stay in the house up to 10 years after his death and the children will pay 1/2 of the tax, insurance and maintenance costs. I will be entitled to his pension and will keep getting paid after his death until I die. I willed 1/2 of our house to his three children and grandchildren to share equally. My DH can stay in the house as long as he can and the children will pay ½ of the house related cost. Any cash or cash convertible will go to my younger brother's children. I will change my will whenever I feel it necessary, though. Also, I wrote a "living will", but I appointed my best friend (very wealthy) as a power of attorney. She is the executor of my will, too. (My DH knows about it.) It may sound very different as if I do not love my DH and trust him. However, when you are in this kind of situation, you have to protect yourself. I firmly believe that his children go first when something happens on me like death, veggie or Alzheimer. Blood is thicker than water.

KK, you know how I feel (it's basically how you feel) but I'm just going to reiterate my $.02 on this subject for the newer posters. Here's my summary of how I feel about this, as to what is fairest: -No one should get thrown out on the street. Surviving spouse should have house free and clear as long as s/he lives there. If s/he decides to move, it then becomes a question of whether parent wants to write will to provide share in profits from sale to children also. If house is the ONLY asset, then no remainder should go to kids since most or all will presumably be needed to purchase comparable new house. If house is one asset among many, there is option for parent to decide that kids should share in all assets, ensuring, of course, that there is enough to provide for spouse remaining in comparable house. -In blended families with more than adequate means, there are enough assets where there is no reason it HAS to be an "all-or-nothing" scenario. In these cases, it's just inviting discontent and trouble to insist that one party has to get ALL of the estate and other parties have to get NONE. -yes, there is a difference between families with means and families without means. In families without means, splitting sale of house may very well mean that spouse is rendered homeless. In families with means, leaving everything to spouse may very well mean plastic surgery, trips to Europe and designer clothes & bathrooms for footloose & fancy-free spouse and decades of bills, dead-end drudgery and debt for hard-working children (and their children). NOT FAIR, I don't care how anyone wants to couch it, and not comparable to a situation with actual hardships. ESPECIALLY if this scenario is not what Dad would have wanted or envisioned when he trusted his spouse to be a fair and reasonable 'steward' of his hard-won assets. -If supposedly it's "all about what Dad wants", then LISTEN to him and ACCEPT it. If he says (when he's in sound body/mind, and especially if he says it numerous times over several years) that he wants everything to go to to wife, kids have to accept that. If he says he wants everything to go to kids, wife has to accept it. -No one should try to change "what Dad wants". Neither kids nor wife have right to TRY to do so. Sometimes wives and/or kids feel like by virtue of their particular place in his life, they are more entitled to try and influence not only his decisions but even his FEELINGS and thus even what he WANTS. This is wrong, not to mention daunting. -But the subject should not be completely taboo. The key difference is *discussion* vs. *demands*. Wife and kids may raise their concerns and hope Dad takes these into consideration. Hopefully one conversation will suffice to lay the concerns on the table (but when another party is relentlessly and repeatedly manipulating the situation from the other side this becomes more challenging). Pushing the issue repeatedly and forcefully becomes manipulation, coersion and soemtimes abuse. It is wrong, no matter who it's coming from: ex-wife, lawyer, kid, current wife. Wrong, wrong, wrong. -Simply put: SM is not Mom. Second marriages, in estate planning, have to be considered differently than first marriages. In first marriage, wife is *MOM*. Mom (if she's like most, good and caring) protects and secures her childrens' future. SM may or may not and most often doesn't after Dad dies. It's a fact. Ask estate lawyers, or go looking up other forums on the internet discussing stepfamilies and inheritance. They're generally not discussing ways to ensure the step-kids get their due. If anyone on here can find me ONE example of a step-parent discussing how they can better ensure their stepchildren's future inheritance, I will send you 20 bucks. -In my opinion, in blended family situations where there are above-adequate means, fairest is to split everything between wife & kids. Perhaps provide proportionately more to spouse, relative to how many years older they are than oldest kid since they will likely have more medical issues and become decreasingly employable after a certain age. First make sure that no one is rendered homeless and that none of the survivors have to pay each other's debts. -if Dad leaves all to wife, hoping wife will leave remainder to kids, it won't happen. (Same might be true if everything is left to kids to distribute to wife.) Could be passed down to surviving wife's existing family, or her new family, or spent on drugs, clothes, QVC, stuff for new babies, plastic surgery, or mismanaged or otherwise G-O-N-E by the time she passes and children (age 70+) need it for their own medical bills, retirement, etc. -Too often kids of divorce get screwed over by the cruel irony of exactly this sort of situation, and here's how: Dad's new wife claims she should get *everything* because in first marriages, that is often how it goes: all to surviving spouse. But fails to remember the next step of that traditional pattern: when surviving PARENT passes, remainder goes to children. The parent's OWN children, that is. Step-parents also often argue that their step-children shouldn't be in their spouse's will because ---PRESUMABLY--- kids will inherit from the other parent. (Or even their grandparents, as some arguments go.) All the while, in the same breath, voicing the mantra of "one shouldn't presume anything" or expect anything from parents as a way to justify THIS parent cutting the kid out. Incidentally, many of these same step-parents can and do expect to receive an inheritance from their own parents, and much sooner than their stepchildren will receive anything from anyone. -If Dad leaves ALL to anybody, he better want it all to stay with that individual forever. In an ideal world, we can trust people with this sort of thing. In the real world, we often can't. There are ways to make it so he doesn't have to CHOOSE one party or the other. In my heart, I feel that unless he hates his wife or kids, if he has to choose in this matter he will be just as torn and not-at-peace as he may have been all his life with other matters he may have been unnaturally and unnecessarily coerced into choosing one-or-the-other about.

"“There are no bad guys in all this,” Goldman said of Carlyle and Plaza del Rey. “When I see people saying ‘It’s really expensive for me,’ I say if you’re not working in high tech, which requires you to be here, why are you here? If you’re here, you’re making a decision every minute you’re here that the cost of being here is worth it.” what an incredible idiotic thing to say. what if you feed the ones who work in high tech, teach their kids, nurse the sick and the elderly? A city can't exist if it's populated only by X people. It needs the whole alphabet array of folks functioning properly you know the numerous strikes of different unions in Jerusalem where I lived for many years showed me who's the really more important to the infrastructure-and you'd never tell. teachers-can go on strikes until everybody's blue( which they do. lol). nurses..reach agreements a bit faster. still might take a couple of weeks. i remember them being on strike even longer once. doctors-goes faster with them than with nurses city bus drivers-couple days and their requirements are met waste management? all it took was several hours of not picking the trash ..in 35 C heat. they were all set by the evening of that very day lol thank you for sharing that article..and I read each and every response with great interest here in Southern OC young families can be outbid for months in a row on the most affordable homes in 400s-500s and such..usually these will be small attached condos in okay parts of the cities with okay schools, nothing remotely fab. New construction-no lot, stupid layout, probably costs like our remodeled fixer upper( maybe including the cost of remodel)..tons of association fees, and I'm not even sure what these associations do Our condo we sold-yeah they were PITA sometimes with their constant repairs maintenance and beautifying..but on the other hand they did repair maintained and beautified:) (except for a big miss when they decided to paint exteriors a new color. without consulting me ahahaa. or anybody for that matter) The rental for my MIL is already approaching 2K for a tiny one bedroom apartment, built in 60s, nothing to look at, the complex looks like my life lol, maintained but not updated in any way, very basic, laundry outside(and you need to pay for it. the nerve of these people)..the only good thing about it is its location-close proximity to us, to shops, library, parks..especially to one of the parks that she loves that's several steps away. Gives her some independence, us-some peace of mind knowing that we can be there in 2 min pick her up for whatever, and she has her room in our place if needed. Still I remember coming here from Stamford CT where we lived, on and off, for seven years altogether, and being somewhat pleasantly surprised by the prices:) It was 2010. (some cities in CT are very upscale and look that part but Stamford even though it's right there surrounded by them, could use..I don't know..could use something LOL. Some revolutionary thought. Like, clean the damn ice in the winter?)