The forty plussers (in age) in South Africa are good candidates for havoc in their relationships due to death and divorce in this age group. This is the age group where a mid-life crisis starts taking its toll with marriage vows becoming rusted or forgotten and death due to cancer and stress related diseases breaking up families, all having an effect on their estate plans.

Although most of these people from broken relationships re-enter into further relationships (As they say ‘life goes on’ and Cupid does the rest) very few of these persons from a broken past relationship do proper planning in respect of the re-structuring of their future family affairs and assets. Either Cupid is too much in a hurry or the hormone levels are running at maximum and therefore no or very little consideration is given to a proper family relationship plan in order to prevent unnecessary future family feuds and wars

In most of these restructured families under construction, there are children from both of the couple’s first or earlier relationship/s and often there are also children born off the new relationship, the typical “yours, mine and ours” scenario,  all which sets the scene for serious conflict potential when one or both the parents passes on. This is especially so, when in their hurry to tie the knot, everything else that was learned from the first or previous relationship/s, such as the right matrimonial dispensation etc, is attended to but very little attention is given to the correct structuring of their estates and the family relationship plan of the new couple as part of their holistic estate plan. This is often with costly and sad consequences later on. The absence of a proper family relationship plan is unfortunately very common and perhaps one of the most neglected sub-plans in holistic estate planning in South Africa.

The typical lack of such a family relationship plan is where the new spouse is merely attached or added to existing estate structures such as including the new spouse as a beneficiary to an existing family trust or family corporate structures without properly providing for her or him in a separate structure, keeping the potential conflicting parties apart. Should then one day, when the uniting factor, the parent, passes on, and the step family and in-laws consider it to become out-laws, with such a proper family relationship plan in place, they cannot put their often so eager hands on what is important to those family members closer to the deceased. Not that there is no conflict potential amongst those closer eg those related by blood, such as brothers and sisters. These siblings also require a proper family relationship plan – and don’t rely on the saying that “blood is thicker than water”, but next time more on this kind of plan.