When are your kids old enough to inherit?

When I talk to clients about the age at which their children should inherit their estates, the clients' responses are all over the map. Some are so protective (or mistrusting?) that they want to make sure their children don't get anything at a young age. I've had clients set the inheritance age as high as 65, with the children's shares to be held in trust until then. On the other end of the spectrum, some parents say that if the kids blow the inheritance by the time they are out of their teens, who cares?

Most are somewhere in the middle.

Parents usually want to protect against a young person inheriting money before they really understand the value of a dollar, or are vulnerable to other people. The trick is figuring out at what age a child is ready for that responsibility.

A new article from http://www.capitalmagazine.ca/ talks about this issue, with reference to the late singer, Whitney Houston. To read the article, click here.

The attached photo is also from http://www.capitalmagazine.ca/, courtesy of Starpulse.com.