Best to leave your wealth equally to your children

We believe and we often counsel our clients to leave their wealth equally to their children in their will or trust.

Attorney Tom Olsen: When somebody dies in the state of Florida, whoever has possession of that person's will is obligated to put that original will on deposit with the probate court in the county of residence. Jim, you might go to whatever county your dad died in, see if there's a will on file. If your sister has a legally valid will, where he leaves everything to her, there's no reason why she should not share that with you, it's going to be public record anyway. Jim, I'm so sorry for you now. You know, Chrissy, we have clients come to us every day, we're doing wills and trusts for people every day and the people, first of all most people want to leave it equally to their kids. But if they ask us our opinion, our advice is leave it equally to your children that's what dear Abby would always say. I don't care what kind of financial they're situation in, and some are good, some are bad, some are great. It's best to leave everything for your kids.

Chrissy: It is, and I think that again, it's really great that your entire career, you are about trying to do what's fair and sometimes it does take your counseling to people to have them understand that that is the right thing to do and that's what you are always trying to do. And again, of course as I say, there are many kids out there that should be thankful to you, because but for you, they would not have been getting their share.

Attorney Tom Olsen: That's exactly right. Now another common thing has happened, still say "Hey Tom, we had three kids, one of them has passed away. We want to leave everything equal to our two surviving children." Well I'll ask them, "Did your deceased child have children?" "Yes." "Well, don't you want to include that child's children? They're your grandchildren." "Oh, yeah we should."

Chrissy: And a lot of times, people don't think about that.