I’m concerned that my son-daughter would waste their inheritance. Can this money be protected?

There are ways to provide some strong measures of protection to prevent an adult child from squandering their inheritance.

When you think about how an inheritance may be passed on to an adult child there are really two ways of doing so.  The simplistic way is to just give it to them outright individually and they can do whatever they want with it at that point.  Unfortunately that sometimes leads to some very bad results.

Another way of doing so, and the preferred method if you have concerns about how your son or daughter might manage their inheritance would be through the use of a trust.  We might appoint a successor trustee who’s responsible and capable of making sound financial decisions who would sort of act as a check on what distributions might be taken out of the trust and for the son or daughter.

In that way the money’s not just being completely wasted and used at the whim and discretion of the beneficiary or the adult son or daughter.