Hi Bogleheads,
Thanksgiving is coming up soon. My mother-in-law (MIL) asked my wife for some passport photocopies for an upcoming meeting involving a piece of inheritance. We received decent real estate advice on here previously, so I figured if you had any advice on questions to ask the family about an unusual inheritance question... we are all ears.
My MIL owns a vacation property in Baja California (Mexico). She wishes to make a legal setup of some kind that when she passes, half goes to my wife, half goes to her boyfriend's daughter (who we have spoken to once a few months ago for a fleeting few minutes). The situation raises some eyebrows. Or maybe it shouldn't, but we aren't technically family related to the BF or know the boyfriend's daughter well. The BF and her have been together four years. The MIL is not married. Either way, a conversation about that piece of potential inheritance is coming up at thanksgiving and we want to make sure we ask the right questions if this is a good path to go down.
When the MIL passes, we would have no desire to own international real estate, especially co-owned by somebody we barely know. It sounds like a recipe for confusion, miscommunication, and hurt feelings. Sometime after death, we would likely have to work with the particular daughter on selling it completely or requesting she buy our portion (if she wishes to keep it). The daughter could be forever cordial and nice to work with, or she may not. But the whole thing initially sounds quite complicated. We don't even own normal real estate yet. We are still slowly working on down payment. MIL is in her 70s and declined quite a bit in health this year so we want to be ready emotionally and organized when the time comes. She's a good distance away in NY and there's probably work to be done with stuff there too after passing which might be quite complex in itself as she does not communicate well to begin with.
Would any of you have advice on what questions to politely ask? I have a few that my wife may ask but we are looking for any pitfalls to work out ahead of time. Again we (especially me) are clueless about will, inheritance, and now potentially international real estate.
Question Examples for MIL, not exactly as written here but for brainstorming purposes here's some things we initially thought of:
- Wife's passport expires in five years. Will the legal agreement still work if a different passport is provided at MIL death in whatever Mexican court system we come across? Or is the passport generally just for identification?
- What if the daughter cannot be contacted?
- If the daughter cannot travel, cannot meet up with us, or has her own legal trouble to where she can't deal with something internationally, are we SOL for accessing the property at all?
- Is the daughter aware that we may not want to keep it or co-own it but would still desire to receive a benefit from a sale?
- What legal steps would it take to even sell the property at all? It's... International.
The fine line to be walked, which is to later be figured out, is how to address our concerns without sounding ungrateful or unthankful to be considered for such a generous gift upon passing. Until we get to that point, however, we are brainstorming some unknowns to discuss in the future. We think MIL has worked with legal enough to generate a decent international piece to keep things from getting too tangled up. Either way this seems messy to me though. Initially we have walked through life expect no or little inheritance. Maybe we should keep walking that direction and just take things how they are presented to us, even if that means dealing with a dramatic future mess. Or, we could try and be proactive about things somehow. What would you do or ask if you were in our shoes? Are we too much of worry warts?
Thanks,
NoCo
Thanksgiving is coming up soon. My mother-in-law (MIL) asked my wife for some passport photocopies for an upcoming meeting involving a piece of inheritance. We received decent real estate advice on here previously, so I figured if you had any advice on questions to ask the family about an unusual inheritance question... we are all ears.
My MIL owns a vacation property in Baja California (Mexico). She wishes to make a legal setup of some kind that when she passes, half goes to my wife, half goes to her boyfriend's daughter (who we have spoken to once a few months ago for a fleeting few minutes). The situation raises some eyebrows. Or maybe it shouldn't, but we aren't technically family related to the BF or know the boyfriend's daughter well. The BF and her have been together four years. The MIL is not married. Either way, a conversation about that piece of potential inheritance is coming up at thanksgiving and we want to make sure we ask the right questions if this is a good path to go down.
When the MIL passes, we would have no desire to own international real estate, especially co-owned by somebody we barely know. It sounds like a recipe for confusion, miscommunication, and hurt feelings. Sometime after death, we would likely have to work with the particular daughter on selling it completely or requesting she buy our portion (if she wishes to keep it). The daughter could be forever cordial and nice to work with, or she may not. But the whole thing initially sounds quite complicated. We don't even own normal real estate yet. We are still slowly working on down payment. MIL is in her 70s and declined quite a bit in health this year so we want to be ready emotionally and organized when the time comes. She's a good distance away in NY and there's probably work to be done with stuff there too after passing which might be quite complex in itself as she does not communicate well to begin with.
Would any of you have advice on what questions to politely ask? I have a few that my wife may ask but we are looking for any pitfalls to work out ahead of time. Again we (especially me) are clueless about will, inheritance, and now potentially international real estate.
Question Examples for MIL, not exactly as written here but for brainstorming purposes here's some things we initially thought of:
- Wife's passport expires in five years. Will the legal agreement still work if a different passport is provided at MIL death in whatever Mexican court system we come across? Or is the passport generally just for identification?
- What if the daughter cannot be contacted?
- If the daughter cannot travel, cannot meet up with us, or has her own legal trouble to where she can't deal with something internationally, are we SOL for accessing the property at all?
- Is the daughter aware that we may not want to keep it or co-own it but would still desire to receive a benefit from a sale?
- What legal steps would it take to even sell the property at all? It's... International.
The fine line to be walked, which is to later be figured out, is how to address our concerns without sounding ungrateful or unthankful to be considered for such a generous gift upon passing. Until we get to that point, however, we are brainstorming some unknowns to discuss in the future. We think MIL has worked with legal enough to generate a decent international piece to keep things from getting too tangled up. Either way this seems messy to me though. Initially we have walked through life expect no or little inheritance. Maybe we should keep walking that direction and just take things how they are presented to us, even if that means dealing with a dramatic future mess. Or, we could try and be proactive about things somehow. What would you do or ask if you were in our shoes? Are we too much of worry warts?
Thanks,
NoCo
Statistics: Posted by Northern Colorado — Fri Nov 08, 2024 10:14 pm — Replies 2 — Views 217