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

Money Matters: Letting Your Kids Know What Their Legacy Will Be

Heartache and heartburn lie ahead for grown kids whose parent's don't let them know how they plan to disburse their assets. That's what the estate-planning experts say and they may not be exaggerating.  Of course, right or wrong, you won't be there to see it. But still.

The misunderstandings that can arise range from hurt feelings over who the executor of the will is to why one sibling was chosen to inherit the house and another got the jewelry--when the kids would have preferred it the other way around.

Yes, it's time to have a conversation with your grown children about your estate plan. Not necessarily how much you'll be leaving them but why you're doing what. One set of parents with a financially successful son and a do-good-works but much poorer daughter, sat their son down to explain why the daughter would inherit more of their money than he would. Having the information come directly from mom and dad and the reason behind it meant a lot to the son, who said he might have felt that somehow he had disappointed his parents--rather than that they felt so good about his success that they didn't feel he needed further backing. He also felt that if had disagreed with their reasoning he would have had a chance to argue against it. And he was able to tell them what items of theirs had sentimental value for him.

Such a nice story. And you're probably saying, as I am, I'm going to do it, I'm going to have a conversation with my kids about my estate--however big or small that estate may be. Besides, sentimental value can't be overestimated. And yet we don't do it. I haven't done it yet. Is it the confrontation with mortality? The discomfort of talking about money? Of appearing to play favorites? Of re-stoking sibling rivalries?

Time to come to terms with those emotions. If you need a little rational support, this New York Times story may be just the ticket. 

Re-Nesting: When the grown kids move back home

The economy is taking its toll on those empty bedrooms in your house. More young and not-so-young adult children are finding the only way to survive the downturn--the loss of job or the piling up of bills--is to cut their losses by moving back home. The number of people between the ages of 25 to 34 that are living with their parents increased 17.8 percent between 2000 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau--and that was before the recession firmed its grip. Wonder what the 2010 numbers will look like?

Here's another view of those numbers: Almost 16 million families had at least one child over 18 living at home in 2003, up 7 percent since 1995 and up 14 percent since 1985, according to the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey.

They're "boomerang" or "back-to-the-bedroom" kids. They leave. They come back. Sometimes more than once, often after college, between jobs, before marriage, after a divorce or when housing costs are so exorbitant that moving in to their old bedrooms is more appealing than sharing a small, rundown apartment with three roommates.

Zhu Xiao Di, a research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, has studied boomerang kids for years.In a recent paper, ["The Effects of Housing Push Factors and Rent Expectations on Household Formation of Young Adult,"] he finds a direct correlation between rent prices and an adult child's decision to live with the parents. Couple that with big increases in college tuition and fees, and young adults find themselves saddled with debt before they start collecting their first paychecks.No wonder they head home.

The good (or bad) news, depending on how much you like have your grown children living at home, is that such arrangements aren't usually permanent. The number of kids moving back in with their folks usually escalates during cycles of crisis, such as wars and economic depressions.

Sound like what we're going through now?

Empty Nesting: Clearing out your child's old bedroom.

It took us almost 10 years to clear out our children's bedrooms. They were launched into the world and starting families of their own before we came to terms with the idea that they no longer needed their old bedrooms. And that if we took over those rooms, they wouldn't feel disowned.

I was reminded of those feelings when I read a recent piece in the New York Times by Michelle Slatalla. She is moving east and had to clean out the bedrooms of her college-age daughters who were away at school. It made her remember how awful she felt when her mother bundled up all the talisman's of her youth and dismantled her room. She was concerned that her children would feel the same way. 

Maybe it was the grace of ten years, but I didn't worry about what my children would think. They would still come home for visits but they wouldn't be sleeping in their old beds surrounded by memorabilia from their grade school days. But Paterfamilias was unnerved by the dismantling--in fact, he resisted it for several years. He worried that his children would feel less welcome when they came home for a visit. On an even more gut level, he seemed to feel it was proof that our family had changed, that our children had grown up and moved away to other cities in other parts of the country. And he didn't like to admit it.

Empty nesting is a tricky thing. I've read stories--usually in decorating magazines--about parents who, garbed in a celebratory mood--re-do their now-extra bedrooms within days of their child moving out. I don't necessarily envy them. I wonder at the quick dispatch of the past. Of course, it may be that they desperately needed the extra space. Our son and daughter had the two biggest bedrooms in the house--on the top floor with high cathedral ceilings, skylights and huge picture windows. We took the room off the kitchen--it had more closets and a bigger bathroom. For us to move upstairs to their rooms meant ripping out the built-in desks and bookcases and replacing them with closets and an addition to the bathroom. There was nothing impermanent about the takeover of their space. We carefully boxed up anything they had left behind--that stuff is still in its boxes in the basement; they have never opened the boxes or asked after the old notebooks, textbooks or drawings in them.

They still come home to visit. They sleep in the guest room or on the pull-out couch in the downstairs rec room. I like to think that not retiring to their old rooms--or sleeping in their old bunk beds--makes them feel more grown up and independent, that it helps change the dynamics of the visit. There's no reason to slip back into teen-year patterns. It's a whole new adult world inside the house. The only little kids in it are theirs.

Communications: How it feels when we feel left out of our grown childrens' lives.

"Only connect." That's the famously underlying theme of E. M. Forster's Howards End. It also applies to our relationship with our grown children. We want to stay in touch--not just on a superficial level. We want to know what's happening in their lives, where we can help, where we can offer advice. And there are also those vicarious thrills. After all, our lives are slowing down while their's are picking up speed. And the place where those places interconnect can be uncomfortable. Forster is far from the only writer to look at the frailty of those connections.

Poet Cortney Davis captures the essence of a difficult parent-child moment when she writes of a parent and grown child sitting in an airport cafe:

How's work? I'll ask my son, trying to catch up.
He'll concentrate on his plate. I'll pick up the bill.

Money Matters: Are you squandering their inheritance?

So you took that lavish vacation--around the world in 90 days. Or you've remarried and are indulging your new spouse with a luxury condo or cash or other valuables. A recent piece in Money magazine looked at the issue from the grown child's point of view: What to do if your elderly dad showers a new girlfriend with diamonds or good-old mom maintains an expensive membership to a country club she can't afford and never goes to. Last fall I blogged about a divorced friend whose children wanted her to save some money for them because their father, recently remarried and a man of some wealth, was "spending it all" on the new wife.

We can be a source of aggravation, especially to the grown child who's worried about buying his first home or paying his college debts. He may be wondering whether he can count on a legacy from us. She may even think she can stop our free-spending ways by asking us to "grow up."

What Tyler Cowen, a professor economics at George Mason University and the author of the Money article, suggests is that these grown children take note of a classic paper called "The Strategic Bequest Motive." What they'll learn there: Time is money. That is, we parents of adult children want something in return for a bequest. Specifically, Cowen writes, "studies show that children who frequently call and visit their elderly parents tend to inherit larger amounts than those who don't." Taking that a step further, Cowen recommends that the best way to stop us from frittering away their legacy is for them to shower us with love and attention. "Whether consciously or not, they [Reader: That's us.] will treat their money more carefully because they'll want to leave it to you."

I have a different take on the bequest outcome. Perhaps the care and attention translates into a larger legacy because the love and affection already infuses the relationship--even if the patriarch or matriarch is enjoying a childish spending spree.

The authors of the original paper must have had their misgivings about false pledges of love and devotion. A quick check with the paper shows the authors give space up front and on the first page to a quote from King Lear:

Tell me, my daughter

(since now we will divest us both of rule,

Interest of territory, cares of state),

Which of you shall we say doth love us most,

That we our largest bounty may extend

Where nature doth with merit challenge.

Frankly, we should all have a conversation with our grown children about legacies--what they can and cannot or should not expect. We can only hope the strategic bequest--or the need for it--never comes up. RIP King Lear--and Will Shakespeare as well. 

Your Child's Ex: Don't get too attached

Lesson learned the hard way: Get attached to your child's boyfriend or girlfriend at your peril. They break up and you're left feeling the loss. Until they are an official part of the family, keep your emotional distance.

Many of us have been through it. A recent Carolyn Hax column was from a woman who not only grieved for the loss of the daughter's boyfriend, but for his dog as well. "My whole family welcomed him as one of our own," she writes. Then the daughter broke up the romance. Now, the writer says, "I have lost a big chunk of my heart. I was very close to the dog; he spent weekends with me when my daughter and her boyfriend did things together." She is disappointed in her daughter's decision--the couple seemed so right for each other--and she would like to see the dog, and the boyfriend as well.

Life is full of disappointments, and it hurts to get caught up in the grief of a breakup. It's so easy to say, keep your distance but what to do when the young couple spend time with you, move in together and make you part of their lives--then their relationship implodes. You're supposedly "safe" if  you get attached to a son- or daughter-in-law, but marriages implode as well. And if a couple lives together, how different is that from a marriage, in terms of the bonds you may form?

Well, sad as it is and good advice that the warnings are, the important lesson many of us have learned is to keep the sadness to ourselves and not do anything--like visit the dog or the boyfriend--that would alienate your child. Grown children do not take kindly to a parent undermining a big and very personal decision. Even an innocent remark in passing--"Johnny was such a nice guy" "Cindy was such a good cook" "Tiger was the sweetest cat"--can be construed as a critique of their judgment. Even a year or two later. 

Money Matters: Helping the kid buy a car

When Bud's stepson wanted to buy a car, Bud thought back to his own youth--a time when he was irresponsible and somewhat reckless. The son, in his 20s, needed a car to commute to a job. But he had no credit rating and couldn't get a car loan on his own.

Bud was willing to help--even though he saw a few signs of the irresponsible and reckless in the young man. So here's the deal he and the young man's mom came up with: They would help him--but not by co-signing a loan. They feared that if the son missed a payment it would reflect poorly on their credit record. Instead, they would take out a loan for the car in their own name and the son would make monthly payments directly to them--but with this string attached: If a payment was missed, the parents [owners of the car] would put it up for sale. "I wanted to make sure he shapes up," says Bud. "I don't want him squandering his money on beer and other things. I want to make sure he takes responsibility for the car."

How did it work out? Stay tuned. They just bought the car.

For more information on the perils and pitfalls of co-signing for a a car loan, here's an article on teaching adult children financial responsibilities that deals with the co-signing issue. Bottom line: If you co-signed on the loan, you must make the payments if your child doesn't or suffer the consequences.  The bank lent the money on the strength of your signature and ability to pay.

The article offers some tips on other ways to deal with the car issue:

• Lend him a second family car.
• Buy him a clunker. It can be a gift or he can pay you back.
• If you feel you must buy him a new car, keep it in your name. At least that way, if your kid quits making payments, you have the vehicle. By co-signing, you get all the responsibilities and none of the benefits.

Sounds like Bud is on the right track.

Money Matters: Staying on the job to help the kids out

One friend is paying for her daughter's attempt to start a family through a surrogate pregnancy. The tab is high--$100,000 when all is said and done. Her husband is semi-retired and her daughter and son-in-law could never afford the tab. So she's continuing to work--"to pay the bill." At least, that what she says--that if she weren't paying for the surrogate's pregnancy and all the testing and medical procedures that were part of the pregnancy, she would retire--or work part time.

Another friend is also not retiring. Her son has a prestigious job--but the salary is not nearly as high as the job's profile. Maybe someday he can cash in on all that prestige. Meanwhile, the parents want to be sure there's the wherewithal to help out--when the son's roof needs repair, the basement floods, the grandkids' dental bills mount--without eating up their retirement savings. So they, too, are continuing to work--despite tempting thoughts of retiring to travel around the world.

Lots of us are doing the same thing--putting off retirement in order to have the cash to make life easier, better, more bearable for our children. Some of us are kidding ourselves that this is why we continue to work. A lot of us like working--like our jobs and the second family that work provides--or fear the loss of vitality that might come with retiring from the work force. We don't want to give it up, even if we are dog-tired weary by the end of the work week. While some of us continue to work "for our children," many times it's more of a mixed reason. What makes me nervous is any hint to the adult children that they are the reason we're still working. What a guilt trip that would lay down. And it might not even be true.