In some cases, it may be necessary to delay when a beneficiary receives their inheritance. If they are under 18, they cannot legally inherit. So if you are including grandchildren in your estate plan, for instance, you may need to make special provisions.
But in other cases, you may just be interested in delaying the wealth transfer far beyond 18. Maybe you remember what it was like to be 18 years old, and you’re afraid that a beneficiary is just going to waste their inheritance. You would rather delay things so that they receive the money when they are 30 or 35. You think that they will make better decisions regarding how they spend the money – and that inheritance can help them more at this stage in life as they start a business, start a family, buy a family home, begin saving for retirement and things of this nature.
Using a trust
In both cases, you can accomplish this goal by putting the money into a trust. You can do this in advance or you may be able to set it up so that the trust is funded from your estate when you pass away.
Either way, the trust then owns the assets, and you can give the trustee instructions on how to make distributions. An example of this could be saying that your beneficiary gets 25% of the fund at 30, another 25% at 40 and the full balance when they turn 50 years old.
These numbers are just examples, of course, and you can select the correct ages for your specific situation. Just be sure you know what legal steps to take when making your estate plan.