I once worked with a family whose matriarch left her beloved Brooklyn brownstone outright and in equal shares to her three adult children. It was a generous gesture, born of love. But within a year, that gift had torn her family apart. One son, facing financial trouble, wanted to sell immediately. The daughter, who lived nearby, wanted to move in and raise her own family there. The third child, living in California, just wanted to rent it out for income. Their mother’s legacy became a source of daily, bitter conflict.
This is not a rare story. The instinct to leave the family home or a vacation property directly to the next generation is powerful. Yet in my decades of practice, I have seen this simple act of inheritance become one of the most reliable ways to create acrimony, financial risk, and litigation among otherwise loving siblings.
When a Shared Inheritance Becomes a Forced Partnership
When you leave real estate to multiple children in a will, you are not just giving them an asset; you are making them business partners. Under New York law, they typically become “tenants in common.” This means each child owns an undivided fractional interest in the entire property. They all have equal rights to use it, and they are all equally responsible for its costs—taxes, insurance, maintenance, and repairs.
The problem is, your children are not a monolith. They have different lives, different financial situations, and different needs. What happens when one child can’t afford their share of a new roof? Or when one wants to use the property as their primary residence while the others see it as an investment to be sold? These aren’t theoretical questions. They are the seeds of disputes that frequently end up in Surrogate’s Court.
If the heirs cannot agree on what to do with the property, any one of them can file a partition action, asking a court to force its sale. This is a costly, often emotionally draining legal process that strips the family of control. The property is sold at a public auction, often for less than market value, and the proceeds are divided after legal fees are paid. The family home is gone, and relationships are often permanently damaged.
Exposing a Legacy to Your Children’s Liabilities
Beyond internal family conflict, direct ownership exposes the property to external threats. Once your child’s name is on the deed, their share of the property is vulnerable to their personal creditors, a business failure, or—most commonly—a divorce.
Imagine your son inherits a one-third interest in the family’s Long Island beach house. A few years later, he and his spouse divorce. His share of that house is now a marital asset, subject to equitable distribution. A stranger—his ex-spouse—could end up as a co-owner with your other children. Suddenly, your family’s private retreat is entangled in someone else’s marital settlement.
The same risk applies to lawsuits or bankruptcy. If a child is sued for any reason, their interest in the family property can be targeted by a judgment creditor. An asset you worked a lifetime to build and preserve for your family can be lost because of a single, unfortunate event in one child’s life.
A Trust Provides Stewardship and Protection
There is a far more prudent way to handle generational property: placing it in a trust. Instead of giving the property directly to your children, you transfer it to a trust managed by a person or institution you appoint—the trustee. Your children are the beneficiaries.
This structure changes everything. Your children receive the benefit of the home without the burdens and risks of direct ownership. A well-drafted trust is a rulebook for the future, a clear expression of your intent. It can answer all the difficult questions in advance:
- Who is responsible for paying the property’s expenses?
- How will decisions about major repairs or renovations be made?
- Can a child live in the home, and if so, must they pay rent to the trust to ensure fairness to the other beneficiaries?
- Under what circumstances, if any, can the property be sold?
By defining the terms of use and management, you remove the primary sources of conflict. Furthermore, assets held in a properly structured irrevocable trust are protected from the beneficiaries’ creditors and are not considered marital property in a divorce. The trust owns the property, not the child. This is the foundation of asset protection, governed by a clear statutory framework, including Article 7 of New York’s Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL).
Stewardship. It’s about more than just transferring title. It is the deliberate act of passing on your values and assets in a way that strengthens, rather than strains, the family you’ve built.
If your estate includes a significant piece of real estate, the most important step you can take is to review how that property will be passed down. We often begin this process with a property succession review, examining your deed and existing estate plan to map out a structure that preserves both the asset and your family’s harmony.
