Make sure you pick the right people to have decision-making authority

By James Ward

James Ward

How are the kids? Do they all get along? Do you trust them all? Some of them? None of them?

Can you trust them to stay the course and remain “in line” when things don’t go smoothly in the family? Will money and other assets change their behavior? Have you thought through the possible issues?

Recently, we seem to have encountered a lot of daughters falling out of line and acting differently than the parents had anticipated. These were changes the parent, in prior times, had never imagined would occur.

In one case, the trusted daughter took the demented father to a non-attorney to change the papers and steal the house for herself. Hmmmm . . . A responsible professional never would have allowed him to sign new documents, and a faithful daughter never would have taken the steps to ace out her sibling. But it happened.

In another case, daddy’s favorite little girl went on a vicious rampage against her stepmother of 30-plus years and demanded $300,000 or all hell would break loose for the stepmother. Her father was bedridden, but still very clear minded. When I talked with him about the situation, tears just rolled down his cheeks. He just couldn’t believe his daughter’s viciousness and greed. He had never seen this side of her, and the majority of the family assets had actually originated from the stepmother. The father himself had very little money.

In the third case, the daughter, also previously known as daddy’s favorite little girl, is on her second attorney waging a battle to get her father separated from his wife of 40-plus years and have him live with the daughter and force the stepmother to pay an exorbitant amount of money for the daughter to care for her father. He’s receiving 24/7 professional care now, so it simply has the appearance of the daughter, who frequently travels out of state and out of the country, wanting gobs of money to be dropped into her own pocket under the pretense of “caring” for her dear father. Is that why she initially proposed that the stepmother pay for a major remodel of the daughter’s house and new furniture at the daughter’s house so that the father could be moved there? Really? At a monthly cost of about triple what they’re currently paying for his care?

It’s surprising, and it’s not. Yes, money can change people. Enough money might even change the people you trusted to do the right thing when you’re incapacitated or gone. Some of the cases that cross my conference table are surprising even to me. What I see is truly incredible and often stretches the imagination.

How do you prevent this?

We sometimes put two people together and force them to take their actions only by unanimous decision, but this is cumbersome, and sometimes won’t work if they don’t get along. Do you have a non-family member who can be in charge? Should you use a trust company? Can you hook two children together and have someone else as a tiebreaker in the case of disputes?

Another thing we can do is add “protective” language in the documents to create barriers to change. This is an attempt to thwart both undue influence and outright theft.

The best solution, however, is to make sure you pick the right people to have decision-making authority. How do you know? Ha! That’s up to your best judgment. It’s unlikely your attorney knows the people as well as you know them.