(Warning: Typos Intact, Not Legal Advice)

How do you exclude a corporate business from the family trust fairly for 50/50 beneficiaries

We have 2 sons. We are making a family trust of which all accounts, life insurance and property will be split 50/50. We also have a corporate business in which only one son is a corporate officer and full time worker. The other sons works occasionally and part-time We are trying to fairly apply the business to our trust but feel its only right that the son who is with the company and an officer should inherit the company in its entirety How do we state this and how is it fair or not to the other son?

Answer: There shouldn’t be any problem as long as the corporate documents are correct and the necessary resolutions are completed to transfer ownership of the corporation to the trust. In the trust, you can specify who will receive that specific property, so there’s no need to create a separate trust. Upon your death, the trustee is not obligated to disclose to either son the assets that the other son will receive.

Of course, in most cases, the children may compare notes, so it may not remain confidential for long. However, as a matter of law, one child is not supposed to discover what the other sibling is receiving. Your attorney can undoubtedly phrase this distribution in a legally appropriate manner.

As for the fairness of not giving one child the same as the other, my opinion is that it’s your property, and you have the right to do with it as you wish. Even if you decided to leave everything to your favorite charity, your children would have no grounds to complain.
Do what you feel is right, and remember that no one is entitled to an inheritance.