In addition to providing rules for determining who qualifies as a child, state law also provides for lifetime advancements of inheritances. An advancement is a gift during lifetime that is intended to reduce the amount of any inheritance the recipient may receive on the donor’s death.

Parents and grandparents often want to give children advancements on their inheritance. Advancements can allow children to have assets when they have a particular need for the assets. Advancements can also allow parents and grandparents to enjoy seeing (and overseeing) the assets being used during their lifetimes.

Advancements have raised some interesting issues when the decedent dies intestate or without a will. At common law, when there was no will, any lifetime gift to a child was presumed to be an advancement, or prepayment, of the child’s share of the estate. The child had the burden of establishing that the lifetime transfer was intended as an absolute gift and not to be counted against the child’s share of the estate.

If child refused to put the advancement into the hotchpot, the child could not take anything else from estate. If the amount in the hotchpot was less than the advancement, then the child with the advancement would not have to share amount with others (he would at least keep the amount of the advancement).

The Uniform Probate Code or UPC, which is a set of model rules that have been adopted by several states, provide that any advancement must be in writing by the decedent (1) acknowledging that the advancement was a gift or (2) the decedent’s writing or the heir’s written acknowledgment has to indicate that the gift is to be taken into account in computing the division of the decedent’s estate.

Interestingly, if the recipient of the advancement does not survive the decedent, the advancement is not taken into account in determining the share of the recipient’s children. This is just the opposite of what happened under the old common law rules.

In addition to advancements, transfers to children raise several other unique issues as well. One such issue is who can manage property given to minor children. Let’s look at who can manage property for minors a bit further.