Saving the Family Cottage: A Guide to Succession Planning for Your Cottage, Cabin, Camp or Vacation Home [Paperback]

Stuart Hollander (Author), David Fry (Author), Rose Hollander (Author)

Book Description

Series: Saving the Family Cottage | Publication Date: May 7, 2009

Now published by Nolo, in Saving the Family Cottage, attorneys Stuart Hollander and David Fry explain why problems arise when a vacation home is passed on to the next generation (unequal wealth distribution among siblings and cousins being the usual culprit) and offer practical suggestions on how to address this problem. Hollander suggests how to incorporate succession planning for a vacation home into an estate plan and gives practical advice on such things as which entity is best for succession planning, how to develop a cottage schedule, what to do about an owner who fails to pay his or her assessment, whether to establish an 'endowment,' and how to allocate control between and within generations of owners. Although Hollander uses the term 'cottage,' the principles of his book apply to any property that a family wants to retain. Written for the vacation home owner but with information that also will be useful to attorneys and financial planners, the book engages the reader with stories of cottage 'wars' and planning gone awry. The book makes a complex problem understandable and offers methods to help keep a second home in the family for generations. This edition acknowledged the addition of David S. Fry, Esq. to the book and as the successor to the author's cottage law practice. The updated third edition is now published by Nolo and will be revised to include the latest regarding state and federal laws, including estate tax information.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The first attorney authored book written for the vacation home owner describes the problems inherent to shared cottage ownership and the concerns of parents who wish to pass it on.

About the Author

Rose Hollander has spent more than 19 years working and living in the heart of Michigan cottage country. She was the legal assistant/paralegal in a law practice with her husband, Stuart Hollander, whose practice centered on estate planning to help families concerned about passing on vacation homes. Rose met with families, helped draft documents, and helped families administer the estate after a death.

Rose graduated from Ithaca College. Before working as a legal assistant, she worked as a personnel representative for the Stanford Court Hotel and then as the assistant to the General Manager of the Four Seasons Clift Hotel in San Francisco. She then owned a catering business in Northern Michigan.

Rose is a Great Books leader and chairman of the board of a large Montessori school, and is active on stage in community theater. She has published several essays about life "up north" and parenting.

David S. Fry, is a Michigan attorney whose practice also focuses on real estate and estate planning, particularly succession planning for second homes. He is a fourth generation cottage owner and regularly presents seminars around Michigan on how to keep a cottage in the family.

The original author, the late Stuart Hollander, was a lawyer with more than 20 years' experience helping families plan for succession of their vacation cottages.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Nolo; Third Edition edition (May 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1413310346
• ISBN-13: 978-1413310344
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Business & Investing > Real Estate > Law
  • #13 in Books > Law > Taxation > Estates & Trusts
  • #14 in Books > Law > Business > Property

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well-written But Incomplete Discussion of a Useful Estate Planning Device, July 10, 2009

By 

L. Gildart (Somerville, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Saving the Family Cottage: A Guide to Succession Planning for Your Cottage, Cabin, Camp or Vacation Home (Paperback)

(What's this?)

The authors offer a clear and highly persuasive discussion of the Limited Liability Company as a device for minimizing family strife and preserving family real estate over time. Nolo-published products always rate high on my readability scale versus other legal publishers' treatises and textbooks.

However, in their efforts to advocate for this particular means of preserving a particular kind of family property, the authors utterly failed to mention, let alone discuss, the fact that an LLC, like its close relative the corporation, can be treated as a nullity if its members fail to meet certain conditions or if they engage in certain misbehavior.

Veil-piercing is never mentioned, never discussed, even though the family-owned and run LLC the authors recommend setting up will be ripe for the very kinds of abuses (commingled funds, members who commit torts while on LLC-owned property, failure to file forms or pay franchise fees) that would lead a court to utterly disregard the fictitious entity.

This is a shame, because, while the book is very helpful to someone like me, who would use it as a starting point from which to recommend a comprehensive estate plan, it may be misleading to a lay person. I would have given it four stars if it had included a caveat about the potential for disregard of the quasi-corporate entity, five stars had it included a whole chapter.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for every owner of a cottage/second home, July 14, 2007

By 

Chava Bahle "Reb Chava" (Suttons Bay, Leelanau County, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Saving the Family Cottage: A Guide to Succession Planning for your Cottage, Cabin, Camp or Vacation Home (Paperback)

Saving the Family Cottage contains essential information for any family or individual who owns a cottage. When planning for ownership succession, many cottage owners will leave details of future plans to surviving children or other heirs. This may be easier for the current owner, but often leaves those who inherit with siblings (or others) in complex, emotionally charged and financially strained situations.
This book is clear in evaluating several options for ownership succession and offering the author's copious experience as an estate planning attorney for best results.
The book is written with warmth and wit and is highly readable, a rarity when wrestling with such topics. I highly recommend the book for anyone who loves a family cottage and wishes for future generations within the family to do the same.
This books eases the process of cottage ownership succession planning with grace and clarity to ensure a peaceful outcome for everyone involved. What a gift to have an understandable, reasoned and compassionate approach to sharing the place we treasure the most.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice book on an estate planning technique for property (real estate) you want to keep in the family for generations to come., October 24, 2007

By 

ExecutorCoach.com "estate administration" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Saving the Family Cottage: A Guide to Succession Planning for your Cottage, Cabin, Camp or Vacation Home (Paperback)

This is a good little book. It is well worth the read for anybody interested in estate planning. People who have a cottage, a vacation home, a farm, a retreat or some other form of real estate that the family tends to enjoy should read this book if they want to keep that property IN THE FAMILY for generations to come. And attorneys that do estate planning work would do themselves a favor to read this book so they can provide the best legal help possible when providing their services. This book is not a form book, but it provides enough information on the topic that any competent attorney can put together the appropriate Operating Agreement templates in order to carry out what this book explains is possible.

I must say I think the author is to be commended for writing this book. Clearly it is a marketing piece for his law practice. But it is not just that - it provides provides value in a niche that has not been written about before. The book is broken into four parts:

I. Cottages at risk (1-3)
II. Choosing the right path (4-7)
III. Cottage plans in action (8-14)
IV. Creating a cottage legacy (15-16)

And the book is comprised of 16 chapters:

1. Trouble in paradise
2. Avoid the worst: A partition parable
3. Plan for the best: Cottage succession goals
4. How to plan helps save the family cottage
5. No plan? Then 600-year old law controls the cottage
6. Other animals in the property law zoo
7. Short-term solutions
8. Choose the right legal entity for your cottage
9. Welcome to the club
10. When and how to organize the Cottage LLC
11. The cottage safety valve
12. Cottage democracy
13. Scheduling and use
14. Renting the cottage
15. Minimizing the federal tax bite
16. The ultimate gift: A cottage endowment

I found the book a bit repetitive. It was not tightly written. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the problem of partitions had been stated once up front, and then the book could have moved on. Instead I kept hearing about partitions throughout the book.

In estate planning there is much written about how it is nice to put your major assets in a living trust so the courts (probate court) cannot get involved in the estate settlement process. Whenever courts have to get involved in a matter there is such a loss of control by the litigants. In the instant book, the author explains that it is nice to put your cottage, vacation home, or family retreat into a Limited Liability Company (LLC) so family squabbles down the inheritance line typically won't be mediated by the courts. The other nice thing if the Operating Agreement is drafted well is that there probably won't be family squabbles. What the author proposes is really a good idea. When the original owner of the cottage dies, the beneficiaries of the estate will take title to membership interests in an LLC, not ownership interests in real estate. As a result, partition of real estate interests is not an option in a dispute. 4 stars!