What’s the best gift you can give to your children? When answering this question, our firm has a unique perspective. There are some obvious gifts that parents can give their children. For example, teaching your children empathy, love and respect. While those qualities are important, from our perspective, the best inheritance you can leave a child is a well-organized estate. More importantly, if your financial and medical affairs are well-organized and you become incapacitated, then your children can seamlessly step in to care for you. All too often, an adult child comes into our office needing our assistance in helping with an aging parent. The adult child knows very little, if not nothing, about the parent’s finances or medical affairs and the child begins a treasure hunt slowly gathering information. Ideally, the parent would have a list of all the assets (and their location) with all of his or her estate planning documents. However, usually, the child begins to gather information about the parent’s assets by searching through the parent’s mail and reading the parent’s income tax returns. Sometimes this requires the child to drive up and down El Camino Real visiting all the banks in hopes of discovering all of the assets. This can be very time-consuming process and the child probably has a career and children of their own. So, if you really want to leave a “gift” to your children, leave them an accurate list of all of your assets, their location, and a list of all your advisors (financial, medical, insurance, accountant, etc.). This will help your child take care of you.
