How can you make sure your children dont spend their inheritance recklessly?

Answer 1

First of all, you cant control your children's behavior after you are dead; however, the concept of the spendthrift trust is vaguely helpful.

Somewhat. About all it can do is distribute the property slowly and in dribbles. It has some very real limits.

Basically, the answer to the question is that you cant make sure your children dont spend their inheritance recklessly, except by not leaving them anything.

And even if they dont spend it recklessly, YOU are not going to be about to get a trustee's report.

The best advice is not legal but moral "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

Also, for a parent to spend some time from about 2 years old teaching the child about money, property and things, and how they are to be cared for, and what is wise property use and what is foolish and wasteful property use almost always works. This is an expansion of the preceding paragraph; it has to do with child rearing, and and being a parent who teaches his offspring to honor the graves of his ancestors, and the life of the living at the same time. Consult a probate and estate attorney in your area. There re a number of ways of setting up a trust that will prevent them from blowing the entire inheritance when they turn 18. Typically it involves with providing for their education and giving them the balance at a certain age or after they meet certain requirements, such as graduating from college.