Of all the assets a family in Minnesota owns, nothing is as treasured as the family cabin or vacation home. When designing a family’s estate plan, the cabin is the one asset that the family hopes to preserve after a loved one passes. Families quite often liquidate the other assets, including the family home, and divide equally among the kids.However, with a family cabin, the parents usually don’t want the children to liquidate the vacation home, but rather have it live on for future generations to enjoy with their adult children just like the adults did with their kids.Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen. Usually, a cabin that is left to the kids invites enormous battles amidst the siblings. Why? Because they cannot seem to agree on its use, including the following issues:
Equity
Expenses
Taxes
Scheduled use
and other issues that often only the family can foresee. In fact, many conflicts that arise over the family cabin are unique the that family and require a unique and flexible solution.In the case of Minnesota, a solution exists to protect the family cabin and strengthen family relationships. The solution is called a Cabin Trust.The Minnesota Cabin Trust partitions each of the situations and establishes “modes of operation” for all the sundry issues that often plague relationships for future generations and establishes a framework for helping families deal with inevitable conflict. The result is that the owner’s young ones will continue to enjoy the family cabin and continue to create family memories long after the parents pass on.