Children Remain Your Children at Any Age
Basic Facts
Long term marriage. Three children, all young adults. Adult children and grandchildren from Dad’s prior marriage.
Challenges
Maintaining a positive relationship between Mom and Dad so that the extended family would not dissolve with the marriage, while maneuvering through difficult financial negotiations. Creating a financial arrangement which recognized and addressed important moral, but not legal, obligations which Mom, and especially Dad, felt toward extended family members.
Solution/Value Added
Rather than selling the family home, which a court would likely have ordered, Mom and Dad each made sacrifices and assumed certain financial risks. As a result, they maintained the home as the gathering place for the extended family as well as another property in which grandchildren resided.