Blended Families and Estate Planning in Maryland: How to Protect Your Loved Ones
Estate Planning Maryland
Blended Families and Estate Planning in Maryland: How to Protect Your Loved Ones
Protecting the people who matter most in a blended family.
Blending two families can bring together different traditions, relationships, responsibilities, and financial histories.
It can also make estate planning more complicated.
Maybe you have children from a previous marriage. Your spouse has children of their own. Perhaps you share children together. You may own a home together while keeping some accounts or property separate.
In a family like this, a simple question such as “Who should inherit?” can have several answers.
Maryland law provides default rules when someone dies without a will, but those rules do not know how close you are to a stepchild, what you promised your children, or how you want to balance providing for your spouse with preserving an inheritance for the next generation.
For blended families, estate planning is about making those choices clear before someone else has to figure them out.
What Makes Estate Planning Different for a Blended Family?
In a first marriage where all children are shared, spouses may have fairly similar goals. Each may want everything to go to the surviving spouse first and eventually to their children.
A blended family may need to think differently.
FOR EXAMPLE, YOU MAY WANT TO:
- Make sure your spouse can continue living comfortably
- Leave certain property to children from a previous relationship
- Provide for children you share with your current spouse
- Include stepchildren whom you consider your own
- Keep certain inherited or family property within your side of the family
- Reduce the chance of disagreements between your spouse and children after your death
None of these goals is unusual.
The challenge is making sure your estate plan actually carries them out.
What Happens If You Die Without a Will in Maryland?
If you die without a valid will, you die intestate. Maryland law then determines who receives your probate estate.
This can be particularly important for remarried couples.
Under current Maryland law, if you leave a surviving spouse or registered domestic partner and a minor child, the surviving spouse or partner generally receives one-half of the intestate estate.
If there are no surviving minor children but there are surviving descendants who are not also descendants of the surviving spouse or registered domestic partner, the survivor generally receives the first $100,000 plus one-half of the remaining estate. The descendants generally receive the balance under Maryland's intestacy rules.
That may or may not match what you intended.
Imagine you remarried after having two children from a previous marriage.
You and your new spouse have built a life together, but you also want to make sure your children eventually receive part of what you accumulated before the marriage.
Without a carefully designed plan, Maryland's default rules may produce a very different result from the one you had in mind.
Do Stepchildren Automatically Inherit in Maryland?
This is an important question for blended families.
A stepchild does not generally have the same intestate inheritance position as a biological or legally adopted child simply because a stepparent helped raise them.
Maryland does recognize stepchildren in a limited situation. If someone dies without a spouse or registered domestic partner, descendants, parents, siblings and their descendants, grandparents, or other qualifying blood relatives under Maryland's statutory order, qualifying stepchildren and descendants of deceased stepchildren can inherit.
But that is much narrower than many families expect.
If you consider a stepchild to be one of your children and want that person to receive part of your estate, relying on Maryland's default inheritance rules is risky.
Your estate plan should say what you want.
Should You Leave Everything to Your Spouse and Trust Them to Divide It Later?
Some couples take this approach:
“I'll leave everything to my spouse. They know what I want, and they'll make sure the children are taken care of.”
That can work exactly as intended.
But it also leaves a lot to chance.
Once property belongs outright to the surviving spouse, circumstances can change.
THE SURVIVING SPOUSE MAY:
- Change their own will or trust
- Remarry
- Have new financial needs
- Experience creditor or financial problems
- Develop a different relationship with the deceased spouse's children
- Decide to distribute the property differently
This does not necessarily mean anyone acted unfairly.
It simply means that a verbal understanding is not the same thing as an estate plan.
If leaving something to your children is important to you, your documents should address it directly.
How Can a Trust Help a Blended Family?
A trust can be particularly useful when you want to accomplish two goals at the same time.
For example:
“I want my spouse to be financially secure after I die, but I also want what remains to eventually go to my children.”
A properly designed trust can provide for a surviving spouse during their lifetime while directing what happens to the remaining trust property after the spouse dies.
Depending on the plan, the surviving spouse might receive income or other permitted distributions from the trust.
After the spouse's death, the remaining property can pass to the beneficiaries selected by the person who created the trust.
This can provide more control than leaving everything outright to the surviving spouse.
Trusts can also be useful when children are young, financially inexperienced, have special needs, or when a parent simply does not want an inheritance distributed all at once.
What Is a QTIP Trust?
For some married couples, particularly those with larger estates or children from previous relationships, a Qualified Terminable Interest Property (QTIP) trust may be considered as part of the estate plan.
The basic idea is to provide for the surviving spouse while maintaining control over who ultimately receives the remaining trust property.
A QTIP trust can generally provide a qualifying income interest for the surviving spouse during their lifetime. After that spouse dies, the remaining assets can pass according to the first spouse's plan, such as to children from a previous marriage.
This can make the structure useful in certain blended-family situations.
It can also have estate-tax implications. Maryland recognizes QTIP elections in its estate-tax system, and previously elected Maryland QTIP property can affect a later Maryland estate-tax filing.
However, a QTIP trust is not something every blended family needs.
Can You Completely Disinherit a Spouse in Maryland?
Generally, simply writing a spouse out of a will does not necessarily mean the spouse receives nothing.
Maryland gives a surviving spouse the right to claim an elective share under certain circumstances.
If the deceased spouse leaves surviving descendants, the elective share is generally one-third of the estate subject to election, reduced by applicable spousal benefits. If there are no surviving descendants, it is generally one-half.
The calculation is also broader than simply looking at the probate estate.
Maryland's augmented estate rules can include certain property outside the probate estate when calculating the surviving spouse's elective-share rights.
This matters in blended-family planning because one spouse may want to leave a substantial portion of their property to children from a previous relationship.
Do Beneficiary Designations Matter?
Very much.
Your will is only one part of your estate plan.
Life insurance, retirement accounts, and certain financial accounts can pass through beneficiary designations rather than through the instructions in your will.
That means an old beneficiary form can create an unintended result even when your will has been updated.
For example, someone might create a new will after remarriage but forget that a retirement account still names someone from an earlier stage of life.
BLENDED FAMILIES SHOULD REVIEW:
- Life insurance beneficiaries
- Retirement account beneficiaries
- Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death designations
- Jointly owned accounts
- Property titles
- Trust ownership
- Primary and backup beneficiaries
The goal is to make sure all parts of the estate plan tell the same story.
What About the Family Home?
The home can be one of the most sensitive parts of a blended-family estate plan.
You may want your surviving spouse to continue living there. At the same time, you may want your children to eventually inherit your interest in the property.
How the home is titled matters. Certain jointly owned property may pass automatically to the surviving owner rather than through a will. Property held in a properly funded trust may follow the trust's instructions instead.
A trust may also be designed, when appropriate, to give a surviving spouse certain rights involving the home while preserving a future interest for other beneficiaries.
There is no single solution that works for every family.
Should Both Spouses Use the Same Estate Plan?
A married couple can share goals without having identical estate plans.
This is especially true in blended families.
One spouse may bring a home into the marriage. The other may have a business. Each may have children from a prior relationship. They may also own new property together.
A GOOD CONVERSATION SHOULD ADDRESS QUESTIONS SUCH AS:
- What belongs to each spouse separately?
- What do we own together?
- What should the surviving spouse receive?
- What should each person's children receive?
- Should stepchildren be included?
- Are there sentimental or family assets that should remain with one side of the family?
- Who should serve as personal representative or trustee?
- What happens if the surviving spouse remarries?
- What happens if one of our intended beneficiaries dies before us?
These conversations can feel uncomfortable, but leaving the questions unanswered can make things much harder for the family later.
Common Estate Planning Mistakes in Blended Families
Some of the most common problems are not caused by a lack of love or good intentions. They happen because the legal plan does not match what the family assumed would happen.
COMMON MISTAKES INCLUDE:
- Relying on verbal promises instead of written documents
- Assuming stepchildren will automatically inherit
- Leaving everything outright to a spouse without considering what happens afterward
- Updating a will but forgetting beneficiary designations
- Forgetting to review property titles after remarriage
- Using vague terms such as “children” without making sure the document reflects the intended beneficiaries
- Failing to consider a surviving spouse's rights under Maryland law
- Creating a trust but failing to properly fund it
- Failing to update an estate plan after marriage, divorce, births, deaths, or major financial changes
A blended-family plan does not have to be overly complicated.
It does need to be clear.
What Should Blended Families Do Now?
Start by having an honest conversation about what each spouse wants.
Then review the entire estate plan together.
1. Review or Create a Will
Make sure the people you want to inherit are clearly identified and that your choice of personal representative still makes sense.
2. Consider Whether a Trust Would Help
A trust may provide additional control when you want to support a surviving spouse while preserving property for children or other beneficiaries.
3. Review Beneficiary Designations
Make sure retirement accounts, life insurance, and other beneficiary-designated assets still reflect your intentions.
4. Review Property Ownership
Confirm how your home and other jointly or separately owned property will pass.
5. Create a Financial Power of Attorney
A financial power of attorney allows you to authorize someone you trust to handle specified financial and legal matters on your behalf. For blended families, clearly choosing who can manage accounts, bills, property, and other financial responsibilities can help prevent uncertainty if you become unable to handle them yourself.
6. Create or Review Your Advance Directive
An advance directive helps communicate your healthcare wishes and allows you to name a healthcare agent to make medical decisions when appropriate. Clearly identifying that person can be especially helpful in a blended family where a spouse, adult children, stepchildren, or other relatives may otherwise be unsure who should make important healthcare decisions.
7. Review the Plan After Major Family Changes
Remarriage itself is a reason to review an existing estate plan. So are divorce, births, deaths, significant property changes, and changes in family relationships.
Final Thoughts: Make Sure Your Plan Reflects Your Family
There is no single definition of family that fits everyone. Some blended families are incredibly close. Others have complicated relationships. Many fall somewhere in between.
Maryland law provides rules for what happens when someone has not made certain choices themselves, but those rules cannot know which relationships matter most to you.
A thoughtful estate plan can help you provide for your spouse, protect an inheritance for your children, intentionally include stepchildren, and make your wishes easier for everyone to understand.
The goal is not to choose one side of the family over another. It is to decide what you want, put those decisions in writing, and make sure the different parts of your estate plan work together.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Blended families may need additional estate planning because spouses, biological or adopted children, and stepchildren do not necessarily have the same rights under Maryland’s default inheritance laws.
- Maryland’s intestacy rules may not distribute property the way a blended family expects.
- Stepchildren should be intentionally addressed in an estate plan if you want to provide for them.
- Trusts can help provide for a surviving spouse while preserving remaining assets for children or other beneficiaries.
- Certain married couples may consider a QTIP trust, particularly when tax planning or preserving assets for children from a prior relationship is important.
- A surviving spouse may have elective-share rights under Maryland law even when a will provides otherwise.
- Beneficiary designations and property ownership should be coordinated with the will and trust.
- Remarriage is an important time to review an existing estate plan.
Create a Plan That Fits Your Family
Blended families often have more people, relationships, and goals to consider when creating an estate plan.
DK Law Group can help Maryland families review their wills, trusts, beneficiary designations, and property ownership and create a plan that reflects the people they want to protect.
The Blended Family Challenge
Build the Family,
Build the Plan
Match each family situation in Column A with the best estate planning tool or action in Column B.
You have 3 lives. Each incorrect match costs 1 life. Try to match all 8 situations before you run out of lives!
Story
Michael and Renee are a blended family living in Maryland. Michael has two adult children from a previous marriage, and Renee has one adult daughter. They want their estate plan to protect each other while making their wishes for their children clear.
Connect each situation to its match.
Click a situation, then an answer, or drag from a gold dot. Lines stay gold until you select Check Matches: ✓ green means correct; ✕ red means try again. Change a connection by selecting its situation and a new answer. Each newly checked wrong match costs one life.
Column A: Family Situations
Column B: Find the Match
Check Your Matches
Remember
Blended families often have more people and priorities to consider. A coordinated estate plan can help protect a surviving spouse, provide for children and stepchildren as intended, and make your wishes clearer for everyone involved.
