The five steps include:
1. Understanding your vision in cabin succession goals.
2. Communicating with family members about the cabin.
3. Decisions and legal drafting.
4. Funding your cabin succession plan.
The most important thing that a cabin succession plan can do is help you avoid a “family cabin feud.” You may know of other people who have had issues in passing the cabin down to the next generation. For example, parents may give the family cabin to three siblings as a gift, but one of the siblings wants to be bought out. However, the other two siblings who want to remain using the cabin cannot afford to pay several hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy out the third sibling. Another issue can arise if there are implied understandings among family members as to who should or should not be allowed to use the cabin. For example, parents may give the family cabin to one sibling with the implied understanding that the two other siblings should be allowed to use it whenever they want. You can imagine what types of problems this causes when there is no framework around which to determine how often the other siblings get to use it or whether they have a legal right to use the cabin at all. Oftentimes, people think it is a good idea to pass the family cabin down to their children as joint tenants or tenants in common. Tenants in common means that each person owns equal shares. If there are two children, each child owns a 50% interest in the property. Joint tenancy means that the surviving person gets to take the entire property. If you deed a property to your children as joint tenants, and one of your children passes away, the surviving child takes the entire property. This can have the negative effect of excluding the family members of the deceased child, and only giving this very significant and valuable asset to one of your children's families. When property is owned in tenancy in common or joint tenancy, the property can be threatened when a child has creditor problems, a messy divorce, or wants to sell the property. A joint tenant or tenant in common can always file a lawsuit called a partition action. In a partition action, the property can be ordered to be sold by the court. A cabin succession plan helps alleviate these problems by putting a clear structure in place for the family members to follow. There are two main ways to establish a cabin succession plan. One way is through the use of Cabin
