Not as they intended: Estate plans gone wrong

Estate planners like me are always telling people to make their plans and get them onto paper in the right way. But even planned estates occasionally go off the rails. Sometimes it's because of an essential detail that got lost in the shuffle, and at other times (okay, let's be real here, MOST times) it's because beneficiaries behave badly after the death of a testator.

I recently came across an article in which www.financial-planning.com talked to a number of legal and financial advisors to find out the worst estate disasters they had seen. It's actually very eye-opening because it shows that no item is too small (a recipe box, for example) or too large (such as a big trust fund) to be the cause of an estate dispute. It also demonstrates very clearly that you don't have to be super-wealthy to get benefit from proper planning.

Click here to see the story.