Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us

Lending Money: The family fund that offers a helping hand and a living legacy

Many of us want to make things easier for our grown children--pave the road for them with a little help here and maybe even a lot of assistance there. That is, if we have the wherewithal to do it.

Recently, the New York Times weighed in on the issue, taking as its news cue presidential candidate Mitt Romney's remark, "I have inherited nothing." The initial point Times writer Ron Lieber makes is that a living inheritance comes in many forms. "It exists along a range from the free room and board for a 23-year-old intern to a stay of years for a 43-year-old single parent who has lost a job or recently divorced. The contribution can be as small as a first month’s rent or as large as the 25 years of payments that many parents now make on college loans they took out so their children would not have to."

The larger point is that the harder a young adult has to work to make the next geographic, career and economic step up, the more difficult it is to make that step. And repayment of student loans--a crisis that is raging among college graduates, both recent and long-time--is one of those hurdles that can keep a grown child from making that next step up. "The lack of any family help can have a compounding effect on the millions of people who have negative net worths well into adulthood thanks to their student loan debt," Lieber writes.

Meanwhile, even as college costs rise, today's economy is marked by a distinct lack of opportunity for college grads to move into career jobs that pay enough to cover living expenses. And that's why so many of us are helping our grown children. Recent data shows that  nearly 60 percent of 23- to 25-year-olds report receiving some kind of financial assistance from their parents--even when it's sometimes a stretch for the parents. As one 70-year-old parent told Lieber, he didn't want any of his three children "to go so far downhill that they’ll never get out.” In other words, those of us who can afford it are, in effect, trying to guard our children against downward mobility.

Lieber ends his piece with a suggestion for providing family funds for college students: a loan pool set up by the family. He noted that George Lewis, an 82-year-old lawyer in Quincy, Ill., along with his nine siblings set up an education fund in honor of his grandmother who "had a strong belief in education." Today, the nearly 50-year-old fund, with holdings of $111,000, lends money interest-free to scores of members of the extended clan. 

SInce that piece ran, Lieber has updated it with other examples of family funds. Some of the examples are of fairly prominent people--Berry Gordy (the founder of Motown Records), for instance--who set up family funds to lend money to the upcoming generation. But one made it all seem within reach to the non-prominent among us. Lieber reports that Suzette Haden Elgin, in a book called “The Grandmother Principles,” offered her own notion of a family loan fund that grandmothers can initiate. She suggests asking for a small deposit from everyone in the family, including children. Having the younger ones pitch in can help give them a stake in the process and a reason to track the fund’s growth and its beneficiaries.

Put that way, it doesn't seem so formidable and even has the frisson of bringing the family along on a daring step toward the future.

 

Leaving a Legacy: Making a list (checking it twice) for who gets what treasures

They have a will that tells their grown children how the major assets in their estate will be shared. But a few weeks ago, Jane and Lester took an additional step. They made out two lists. One they shared with their children as soon as it was complete. Jane calls it the "asset locator." It tells the couple's two grown children--a son and daughter--where the assets are. "Everything is in there that they will need to know: Where we have our safe deposit box and where the key is; where our bank and stock broker accounts are. Who to call. Everything."

Jane and Lester want to make things easy and dissension-free for their children to handle all things having to do with the estate. They've even laid out their funeral plans--where they want to be buried, what the tombstones should say, which funeral home to use. "If I go last," Jane says, "I've even told them what kind of food platters to have after the funeral service and where to order them." She is leaving little to chance--or sibling dispute.

What  her children don't have a copy of is the second list. Jane calls this the "distribution list." One of the first things she did when she retired a few months ago was to walk through the house and list everything of value: her grandmother's hand-carved chair, the antiques she and Lester have purchased or inherited, the sofa, the Persian rug, Jane's jewelry. The list tells her kids who should get what. She and Lester haven't made all those decisions yet. But Jane has talked to her kids from time to time about what they would want. "Some of the stuff I know one of them wants and I will give it to them. Some stuff this one doesn't like and that one does." And some stuff no one has spoken for. She may eventually sell some of those items--rather than leave it to them to dump her father's paintings or her grandmother's chair.

There are complications, especially with the jewelry. Jane's engagement ring is made up of two small diamonds, setting off a Sapphire center. She wants to make sure it stays in the family for generations to come. It's a ring her daughter has always loved. She is going to leave it to her--with some instructions: When her daughter's four-year-old twins (both boys) come of age--twenty or thirty years hence--and meet the loves of their life, she wants her daughter to give each one a diamond from the ring to use as an engagement gift.

The point of the list, Jane says, is not to control where things go--although clearly there's a little of that in it--but to avoid any legacy disputes between her kids. "I've designated who gets what," Jane says. "because I don't want there to be a fight."

That may be the most important and long-lasting legacy of all.

Leaving a Legacy: Letting your grown kids know what you are willing their way.

Estate planning is a funny thing: We don't give it much thought--until we do. When we're leading active, vigorous lives, who can be bothered--who wants to be bothered--by thoughts of mortality? As we get older and more isolated, we may start seeing those wills and estates as a 'pay back' device. And we do so at our peril.

I was reminded of this by hearing Hendrik Hartog  talk about his book, "Someday All  of This Will be Yours," on the Diane Rehm show.  Hartog catalogues a century's worth of emotional perils and legal pitfalls that come with leaving an inheritance that is seen as unfair to  one or all of your children. As he explained on air, his aim in presenting a history of cases between 1850 and 1950 was to look at what they show about parent-child relations and how, in a time before pensions and Social Security, people used the promise of inheritance to secure care for themselves in old age--a grown child was often called upon to stay home and care for an aged parent-.

But Hartog made an important point beyond legal and cultural history. Even though the cases he discusses come from a different time and era, some things never change. People he talks to today tell him similar stories of inheritance plans gone bad in terms of family harmony and unity.

All of this is just another way of saying, it doesn't have to be so, that we can clear the air so that our grown children not only know what's in our estate but what our guiding principles are in dividing up those worldly goods between them and others. Great movie scenes though they make, the reading of the will ought to have no unpleasant surprises--in fact, no surprises at all. The more our grown children know what we're thinking and where and how we saw fairness in drawing up our will, the fewer sources of disharmony we'll leave behind.

The will isn't pay back time. We do want to be remembered fondly, don't we?

 

Grandparenting: Are we willing to share the wealth with our Grands?

A few days ago, I wrote about a 2011 MetLife survey on boomer parent's spending habits vis a vis their grown children. (Long story short: Most of us want to help our adult children with college tuition; fewer want to help them buy a house.)

There's also a 2009 MetLife survey on how grandparents feel about spending money on their grandchildren. The 2011 survey already covered the college tuition question for grandchildren--most of us say, 'no way.' But this survey has more specific questions.

How do we feel about financial assistance or monetary gifts for grandchildren? Two out of three of us give our grandchildren money; The average amount in the five years leading up to 2009: $8,700.

Why did we do it? The reasons most cited were general financial support, education, and major life events.

Do we want to give them gifts while we're still here or leave them a lump-sum legacy once we're gone? Nearly 80 percent of us would rather distribute smaller gifts. Nothing beats seeing them enjoy an indulgence or appreciate real-world help.

Has the Great Recession and its aftermath made us more generous toward our Grandkin? One in four of us report we are providing more assistance than in the past, due to the current economy.

Do we give advice along with the money? Not so much. More than two-thirds of grandparents report that they are not providing any financial advice or guidance to their grandchildren. Among those who are talking to their grandchildren about financial issues, the most common advice is “start saving early in life,” and “don’t get into too much debt.”

Isn't that what our grandparents told us?

Leaving a Legacy: A place defines a family's values for generations to come.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my legacy to my grown children. By that I don't mean how much money Paterfamilias and I will leave them--who knows what will be left to leave should PF or I hit a serious-illness streak. I'm thinking more about what I'll leave that lets my grown children and their children know who I was and what was important to me, that little (or big) something that underscores my values, whatever wisdom I have to impart, a sense of the life I've lived.

Being a writer, I've always thought of the written word as my road to legacy. But a recent New York Times story ("In a Maine House, No Room to Waste"), held out a whole other notion. A couple in their 60s--each having grown children from previous marriages--love spending weekends on Mt. Desert Island in Maine, a place where kingfish and heron patrol the mudflats and marshes and development is sparse. When they cross the bridge onto the island and can smell the ocean, the couple said, they "roll down the windows and holler, “Yay!”   They eventually went from transient visitors to homeowners: buying and renovating a second home there, being very careful not to enlarge the home's footprint or leave any additional marks of man on the mudflats. It meant a very expensive commitment--to a home, a way of life and the marshy wilderness. They see the house as a way of leaving a legacy. They bought the house, the couple reported, "because we loved this island and we wanted to provide a way for us and our family and the other people we love to live together on this most gorgeous place on earth.”

A living legacy that says a lot about one family's values.

 

 

Leaving a Legacy: Letting grownchildren in on the plan for your worldly goods.

In the French movie, Summer Hours, three forty-something siblings grow apart over how to dispose of a beloved summer home and the valuable items inside it. When their mother died, she left no specific instructions--just the hope that the place would be kept going for the next generation. I'm not giving the ending away to say that the mother's wishes go unfulfilled and that the relationship among the siblings deteriorates.

King Lear also fumbled his estate planning. He let his children know  who would get what--but not in quite the best way.

Movies and literature are filled with sad tales that surround the making or not making of plans for worldly goods. Estate planning runs amok or doesn't take place at all. While some of us have been orderly about the process--made out wills, told our children where accounts can be found. We may have skipped one important step: talking with our children about the disposal and dispersal of the lesser items.

Not that I've taken this advice myself, but I'm reminded of the need to make such arrangements--to ask my grown children who wants the piano and who would enjoy the Phyllis Plattner watercolor that hangs in the living room? Would anyone like my collection of wood, porcelain and tin cats? And what of the other things in our house--items paterfamilias and I might not prize but that may carry great sentimental value for one of them. I should gather our grown children together and do a walk-through. It needn't be gruesome. It doesn't mean we're about to leave this world. It's just a chance to put a plan in place that everybody is happy with--and avoid a post-mortem blow-up. Of course, we wouldn't be there to see the latter, but still....

In a Washington Post article, Adolf Gundersen wrote about his experience in doing just such planning with his 80-year-old parents and his siblings. The evening--his wife dubbed it a "pre-mortem"--of putting on paper what would happen when his parents were gone "combined the gravitas of a memorial service with the easy sharing of a holiday dinner. And the best part of it was that my parents were there to enjoy being the center of attention." The author and his four brothers decided what would happen to a cabin in the woods that they all loved but didn't want to manage.The get-together also touched on discussions about financial and health care planning that his parents admitted they were "weary of dealing with on their own."

Gundersen writes about some of the reasons why he, his brothers and parents waited so long to have this conversation. "Getting us kids actively and directly involved in so many facets of their lives would mean a huge role reversal....For a long time neither of them had seemed psychologically ready for such a gathering."

Depending on where we are in our life cycle, we don't necessarily have to invite our children into a full "pre-mortem" discussion. (One friend admits that her mother has a dispersal discussion with him and with each of his brothers whenever they visit. Her agenda: to find a home for her clown collection--something none of the children admire or desire.) But it wouldn't be a role-reversal for us to invite our grown children over to tell us which of our possessions they'd like to have once we no longer need them. Not that I need them to assure me that someone will keep my cat collection together.

Leaving a Legacy: Something to remember us by

My mother's tea cups: three cups and saucers, gilt edged and hand-painted--each with a different flower. When my mother died several years ago and I flew down to Florida to clean and clear her apartment, I placed those tea cups on a heap marked "donate." When Alpha Daughter arrived to help out, she scarfed them up.  She loved them. Of course, as a grad student living in a one-room apartment, she hardly had room for them. So they were boxed up with rolls of bubble wrap and shipped to my home to store until the she was ready for them. A child, dog and small house later, the time was still not right. The tea cups are still boxed up in my basement, awaiting the right and safe place to display them.

And they are a reminder to me of the power of a legacy. My daughter wanted those tea cups not for any inherent material value. She wanted them as a reminder of her grandmother, of my mother's love for things delicate, her desire to surround herself with things of  beauty, no matter how fragile. When she was alive, the tea cups sat on dainty wood stands, two in little niches on her desk-armoire and one on the side table, next to the porcelain lamp with the pleated silk shade. My mother and daughter shared an aesthetic--among many other things. No wonder my daughter wanted the tea cups, even as I saw them as so much stuff to be cleared away.

They are also a reminder to me to figure out what I want my legacy to be--to my children and grandchildren. Paterfamilias has already started down that road. When he found in his files a 5-page, typewritten manuscript--A Portrait of Courage, it was entitled--he knew what he wanted to do with it. The manuscript had arrived years ago from a neighbor of his father. PF's parents had lived in a garden apartment in a working class neighborhood in Queens. His neighbor, typing the story out on a manual typewriter, wrote about how she saw my father-in-law leave for work every morning, dressed immaculately in suit and tie. They would greet each other with a good morning and go on their way. When she found out, she wrote, that he was dying of cancer, she would stop to ask how he was. He never complained, she wrote. He talked about the weather and the fine day it was. As he grew thinner and thinner, she worried about him. A few days before he died, she saw him walking to his car to go to work and asked how he was. "Not so good," he said. "But it's a beautiful day."

PF scanned that manuscript into his computer and sent the pdf off to Uber Son and Alpha Daughter. He wanted them to remember who their grandfather was--and, when the time came, for his grandchildren to read this simple tribute to him and his courage. It is part of a broader legacy PF is working on: Letting his children and grandchildren know from whence and what they came. His most recent "legacy:" a book he wrote about the congressman he worked for in the 1970s. [People's Warrior: John Moss and the Fight for Freedom of Information and Consumer Rights.]

I am finding the road to legacy more slowly. I doubt I will do what some friends are doing: recording a disc that their children and grandchildren can play years later that holds words of advice or wisdom from them. It's a fine idea for the right person, (remember Alex Baldwin as Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, spelling out "advice" to his unborn son?). It is not my kind of thing. And just when I thought I was coming up empty, I realized that my legacy has been simmering for years. I've been keeping a collection of notes on all the funny and clever things my children said when they were small--and still say now, my grandchildren as well. One of these days, I'll write up all those stories. We're an anecdotal family that loves a short, punchy story. I'll leave them all the evidence.

Legacy lived.

 

Why do we go to all this bother? PSYCHOtherapist or other expert on what it all means.

Dana Points, the editor in chief of Parents magazine. “Today’s grandparents don’t feel like they look or act like the grandparents of a generation ago,” she said, “so there can be a weird disconnect with the official term.”