A cottage is more than a building, a beach or a dock. It houses powerful, indelible personal memories. That's what makes it a problem. Although she did not want to discuss her personal experience with a cottage inheritance gone sour, she feels that her first-hand knowledge helps her council clients with their estate planning. But failing to talk to family is sewing the seeds of dissension.
Problems can arise when two or more of the children want to inherit the cottage.
Threatened with the loss of a treasured part of their lives, unresolved conflicts may bubble up. I have had clients who feel the whole family will not be able to agree. The parents sell the cottage on the open market because the whole thing is so emotional and difficult. In the other extreme, one client has decided to leave her cottage to one of her three children and let that child battle things out with the other two later. Some cottage owners take a seemingly less drastic approach.