Look at another person’s estate plan from their point of view.
If you feel slighted by an estate plan, it is sometimes helpful to look at the other person’s point of view, according to philly.com in “Wife upset by in-laws’ plans for their estate.”
A woman wrote to an advice column to say that her husband had a teenage son from a previous marriage. The woman was cleaning out papers from their office and discovered a printed out email from her father-in-law to his attorney. The father-in-law was asking how to set up his estate so it would be certain to go to the teenage son, and not the woman, after her husband passed away.
This upset the woman, since she felt that she was being viewed as not being trustworthy enough to make sure the teenage son received an inheritance after her.
The problem is that if the woman had seen this from the father-in-law’s point of view, she might not have been so upset.
He wanted to make sure that his assets were kept in the family and that his grandchild would eventually receive them. The woman could have possibly gotten remarried or had a falling out with the son after her husband passed away.
From the point of view of the father-in-law, he may not have been passing judgment on the woman’s character but wanted to make sure his grandchild received an inheritance from his grandfather.
Reference: philly.com (April 23, 2017) “Wife upset by in-laws’ plans for their estate.“
