re: Setting Up a Trust for Children Advice

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I trust my wife, but people change, and its hard to look 20 years into the future and have any sort of certainty when it comes to these types of things. From what I have seen in my own personal experience, money makes people go crazy. I have had issues within my own immediate family.

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Please sit with an estate planning expert: a really good one will talk through this with you. What is your goal? To preserve cash for your children? You're right that people change & money makes ppl do crazy things--but you also need to consider that preserving cash for your children might deprive your wife in some future time of need/crisis. Would you really want her to be in need at the expense of preserving cash for your children?

Imagine a scenario where you predecease your wife & you've locked up the separate property, tight, for the children's use when they're 25 or older. She comes down with (G*d forbid) MS or a similarly debilitating condition & needs care....modifications to a house to allow her to live at home with the still-minor kids, etc. Would you really want them to suffer, while preserving the cash for later?

I know you're fixated on the "bad" that people potentially do with money; but assuming the worst of one's spouse seems pre-emptively cruel. Life insurance or other strategies should be considered as you plan for the future.