The story below is a preview from our November/December 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
A good estate plan ensures your assets go where you want, with professional guidance and updates.
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You see it dramatized in a Hallmark movie: The deceased’s young mistress for the last six months, sitting quietly behind the gathered family members, breaks into a huge smile. She has just learned that the dearly departed’s $20.6 million estate is all hers. Houses, cars, vacation retreat, jewelry and even the family business: all hers. The family is not pleased and shouts almost in unison, “We’ll sue!”
That’s one dramatic scenario that can result from a solid estate plan, one that recounts the dying wish of an elderly soul, who found happiness in his last days. But there are plenty of equivalent possibilities and many more that simply leave one or two family members unhappy.
Courtesy of Lindsey Coley
Lindsey Coley
The goal of most estate plans, agree estate plan lawyer Lindsay Coley and Certified Estate Planner Brandon Bell, is to honestly and completely reflect the final wishes of their late clients. Often, that’s easier said than done.
Putting together a fair, air-tight plan is difficult because of the complexity and the time investment in a document that can — and probably will — change over time. When you’re planning for the accumulations of a lifetime, Bell says, “everything’s a variable.” Detailing those variables is the challenge, and “sometimes the answers aren’t clear.”
To begin the process, says Coley, “I send out a questionnaire before we meet. That gives me an idea of assets, who [the client] wants to name in each capacity. We prepare the estate documents and then give advice. … [Clients] sometimes want different beneficiaries for different people. It’s like a puzzle based on clients’ goals.”
Dan Smith
Brandon Bell
When the client works closely with a professional through the entire process, says Coley, it “can be very streamlined,” but that doesn’t always mean it’s final or even reflective of the client’s final wishes,” says Coley.
“We do the planning and manage it over time,” says Bell. But, he adds, “I can’t legally say whether the client needs a will or a trust. The lawyer will formulate that” as “a third legal, a third taxes and a third distribution.”
The planner, says Bell, will “do the planning and manage it over time.” Bottom line: “Clients pay for my advice, but I don’t make the decision. I stress that this is more than legal. A lot of these decisions need to be thought out.”
Coley adds that, “Any time you have a blended family, second or third marriage, special needs, addiction, a spendthrift, we try to be creative. There are unique situations — divorce, marriage, stepchildren, etc. — and we try use the tools we have. A trust will dictate how/when beneficiaries receive their funds.
“We can never promise that people won’t file lawsuits. … We can include language like no-contest provisions and put mechanisms in place to prove you knew what you were doing. It’s a puzzle with lots of different pieces.” Wills, Coley says, are better if the client is old when those wills are formulated. “Oldies are goodies” because when the documents are written late, there is less chance for a family contesting them.
Ernie Bentley and his wife, Sue, of Blacksburg, have planned well, paid cash, put money away and done the right things in preparation for retirement and the final distribution of assets. Says Bentley, “We could easily live on our Social Security if we didn’t travel,” but that’s not an option they consider. “Travel is our passion.”
The small trust they have from his father stipulated that “beneficiaries could never touch the principal in the trusts, but they were to receive all the earned income from interest and dividends. Earned income excludes capital gains which allows the trust to grow over time, even while paying out the income. The trusts were to dissolve upon the death of each beneficiary and the assets be distributed to the beneficiary’s children.” That’s all clear, right? Well, there’s more.
“There was a clause in the trust which gave the beneficiary the option of rolling the trust over into a new trust for his offspring, which my parents and uncles have done to the benefit of my cousins, brother and sisters.”
Want to learn more about how a solid, well-managed estate plan can honestly reflect your final wishes and protect your legacy from potential family disputes? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our November/December 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!