The Second-Marriage Dilemma

Inheritance questions tend to be easy when you've been married only once. If you die first, your assets—whatever they are—usually go to your spouse. If you have children, you divide the money among them equally. Unequal inheritance sometimes makes sense. For example, you'd leave more to a child who's disabled. But for the sake of future family harmony, equal amounts work best.

If you enter into a second marriage, however, the choices get harder—especially if you remarry later in life. How much, if anything, do you want to leave to your new spouse? If you own the house, does he or she stay in residence if you die first? In long second marriages, do you leave anything to stepchildren?

If you avoid making these kinds of decisions, state and federal laws decide where your money goes. Your second spouse typically will be able to claim one-third to one-half of the assets covered by your will, even if it says something else. Joint bank or brokerage accounts held with a child will go to that child. Your IRA will go to whomever you've named on the IRA's beneficiary form, leaving your new spouse out.

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If you want some other arrangement, you and your spouse must have a written prenuptial (or postnuptial) agreement that meets your state's inheritance laws. You'll also need to change those beneficiary forms.

Overwhelmingly, the spouse with more assets wants to make sure that the second spouse is provided for, says attorney Shirley Whitenack of Schenck, Price, Smith & King in Florham Park, N.J. That might mean leaving him or her with money that otherwise would have gone to your kids.

Where assets are roughly equal, however, or in a late-life marriage, spouses might choose to put their own kids first and leave little or nothing to their new mate.