If Heirs Are Fighting, Try Mediation

Mediation is a way of settling disputes before they escalate into litigation. Mediation has become popular because it reduces the need for families to go to court and it saves money.

It’s surprising how many ruptures there are in families where wills are unclear with who gets what. Many wills are written with the provision stating, “The tangibles will be divided equally among my children.” Then all hell breaks loose. The items being fought over aren’t always valuable. Sometimes a child will say that they have always wanted a particular painting since they were young, and another sibling will say the same thing.

Recently, I was involved in a prominent family that left $2 million dollars to each of the three children. All the tangible articles were handed out proportionately. But there was only one gravy boat to the family China set and they couldn’t agree on who would get this gravy boat, so I ended up as being the custodian handing out the gravy boat at different children’s birthdays, Christmas, and Easter celebrations.

Many families don’t pay that much attention to their wills, and they don’t like to talk about it or think about it for years and years.

Another area that causes problems is when you name two of your four children as the executors. Maybe it’s because these are the two oldest children and two is a better number than four. But if it’s not explained in how you decided on the two children as the executors, it causes tremendous resentment.

One popular way to resolve the tangible distribution of assets is the lottery system. The children draw straws to see in what order they should select the tangibles rather than having the parent set forth in their will that the oldest child goes first. One technique is to reverse the order of the lots in the next round, so the child who picked first in the first round then picks last in the second round and so forth.

Another alternative is to get an evaluation of all the personal items and then divide it into fourths if there are four children.

One of the biggest snags in mediation are the in-laws. Either the son-in-law or daughter-in-law goes to battle because they want to flex their muscles even though the children may get along.

Mediations sometimes fall apart because the lawyers compete or are antagonistic towards each other.

My advice to heirs or fighting is that there is no downside to trying to mediate before you litigate it.

One of the important advantages of trying mediation is that lasting anger and bitterness of litigation doesn’t seem to occur when matters are settled by mediation.

Call the Trust Dr, W. Bailey Smith, who has created over 7,000 trusts at (949) 833- 8891. Email him at BSmith@YourTrustDr.com.