40 | CLEVELAND JEWISH NEWS | CJN.ORG
LEGAL AFFAIRS
APRIL 20, 2018
Pre-planning can help protecting estate in divorce resolution BECKY RASPE | SPECIAL SECTIONS STAFF REPORTER @BeckyRaspeCJN braspe@cjn.org |
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ouples in the process of a divorce have many things on their minds, but an estate plan may not be one of them. According to Bill Beseth, associate attorney at Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, Patrick Saccogna, partner at Thompson Hine LLP, and John Harrison, attorney at Beseth Hickman and Lowder, all in Cleveland, individuals should meet with an estate planner after a divorce has been finalized. “In the event of a divorce, you want to do your estate Harrison planning to make sure all of your designations are clear,” Harrison said. “How do we do estate planning? A lot of it is done through beneficiary designations or who it pays to upon death. Saccogna But if that’s still under the spouse’s name, that could go somewhere you don’t want it to go. You want to come up with a list of your assets that are titled in your name and do the planning around that.” Beseth said redoing individual estate plans is the best thing for divorced couples to do. “The general concern is making sure your former spouse doesn’t receive your assets after you’ve been divorced,” he said. “Depending on how certain designations are made, it could cause additional problems or costs even if the spouse isn’t receiving your assets. Divorced individuals should create a new estate plan as a single person. In addition to doing that, they should revisit all of their beneficiary designations and update those as well.” Saccogna said getting legal counsel before marriage can be helpful.
“There is so much planning they can do to define their rights before they get married,” he said. “They can do that by doing a prenuptial agreement. And if they don’t have the chance to do that before marriage, they can do things during the marriage to help protect separate property. The separate property is the property each spouse owns before they enter the marriage and any gifts they receive personally.” Beseth said, “A prenuptial agreement could assist with some of this. No one makes an estate plan in a happy marriage with the anticipation of divorce, but if one spouse has significantly more assets or a potential family inheritance, those things should be discussed.” Harrison said co-mingling can be a big issue when trying to sort through joint estates. “There can be litigation about what portion, if anything of a joint home, is someone’s separate property,” he said. “But it can potentially be protected from the spouse.” Saccogna said co-mingling is typically when divorcing couples get caught up and make mistakes. “If they end up combining their assets together, like owning a home before the marriage and adding their spouses’ name to the deed, the idea is married couples have the opportunity to keep their separate property separate during the marriage,” he said. Beseth said attorneys can help divorcing couples review their documents and make sure no unwanted outcomes occur. “When meeting a new estate planning attorney, go over these things and provide the attorney with the divorce agreement or judgment so its terms are incorporated as they need to be in their estate plan so you’re not in violation of the divorce decree,” he said. “There needs to be some coordination with the attorney that represented them in the divorce or provide the estate attorney with that information, so they can follow it.” Harrison said, “This is all going to be worked out with the domestic relations attorney and will all be followed up. But (couples) need to at least cooperate, and I know that can be difficult.”