Blended Families
A standard “I love you” will leaving everything to your spouse can quietly disinherit children from a prior relationship. A QTIP trust can provide for your spouse for life while preserving the inheritance you intended for your children.
What you should know
- An outright bequest to your spouse means your children from a prior relationship have no legal claim once your spouse later dies, remarries, or changes their plan.
- Under Alabama intestacy law, stepchildren do not inherit unless they were legally adopted — regardless of how long you raised them.
- A QTIP trust qualifies for the unlimited marital deduction, so assets pass tax-free at the first death — the same tax outcome as an outright bequest.
- Beneficiary designations on life insurance and retirement accounts pass entirely outside your will or trust. In a blended family, those forms are one of the most common ways children get unintentionally disinherited.
- Most blended-family couples reach agreement on their intentions once the conversation is structured. The hard part is rarely the disagreement. It is not having had the conversation clearly.
Outright bequest or QTIP-style trust — which fits your blended family?
Five short choices. Brent reads your answer back to you at the end.
A 30-second guided quiz. Get a personal read on which structure likely fits.
“He eased our worries and made us feel like family.”
— B.C.
This testimonial reflects one client’s personal experience. It does not guarantee or predict the same or similar results for any other person.