Taxation & Estate Planning

The Boston Globe had an article today about a Rhode Island man who had disinherited his two young children, and their mother's fight in court to obtain some of the estate for their use. 

What struck me about the article were the last few paragraphs:

Family members on both sides of the dispute agree on one thing: Corky Sliwkowski loved his daughters dearly. In the two years before he died, he saw the girls frequently, bought a camper to take them on road trips, and planned to expand his Rhode Island home to accommodate their visits, Joe and Barbara Sliwkowski said.

But Corky Sliwkowski never changed his will to reinstate his children. His brother and ex-wife said they believe the document was written when he was in a dark period caused by the manic-depressive disorder he had been diagnosed with a decade earlier. They said his illness could have caused him to forget what the will said, or postpone revising it.

The dead man's longtime pastor, the Rev. Joseph Creedon, of Kingston, R.I., said he believes Sliwkowski would have changed the will in time.

"You don't expect a will to come into play for years," he said. "So if you want to change it, you feel you have plenty of time."

While no one can ever know what he was thinking, it appears that his family and friends believed that he had changed his mind about disinheriting his daughters in his will. Sadly, he never changed his will to reflect his wishes.  The article points out that he did leave life insurance for the children so the finances may not have been an issue, but what child wouldn't feel hurt at being left out of their father's will?

If you've left someone out of a will and have had a change of heart, don't wait to make the changes to put them back in. You never know what life holds.