Customer Reviews

Saving the Family Cottage: A Guide to Succession Planning for your Cottage, Cabin, Camp or Vacation Home

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

Providing for the future of a non-severable/non-divisible asset such as family vacation property or cottage can be difficult. Without a succession plan, difficulties between siblings or groups of heirs who inherit or even financial difficulties can force the sale of a cherished family cottage. To address this, the publisher, Nolo, and the authors provide basic information for those facing this situation. The book is in four parts which are:

Part 1: Cottages at Risk. Identifies the need for including a succession plan for cottages and vacation property in estate planning.

Part 2: Choosing the Right Path. Details the problems which can occur without a succession plan.

Part 3: Cottage Plans in Action. Discusses different types of succession plans while building a case for the author's favorite - the Limited Liability Corporation (LLC).

Part 4: Creating a Cottage Legacy. This section mentions ways of providing the funding for maintaining the cottage legacy.

While this was written by lawyers, it is not filled with "legalese" and jargon which makes it a fairly easy read. Most chapters include a example which illustrates related problems and gives the reader the appropriate amount of scare. It is clear that the authors consider the LLC to be the best option, however they also encourage the reader to seek legal counsel concerning specific situations and local laws. I found the book to be useful and an appropriate for those making decisions about their estate and I recommend it to anyone with a desire to preserve a property legacy for future generations to enjoy.

Having read a couple of informative Nolo books previously, I expected this one to be worth taking a look at. I was correct. Basically this book is recommended to anyone who owns property and wishes to inform themselves on how to be a better manager when it comes to allocating rental time to people, be they family or otherwise, for using the "cottage." Don't let the term frighten you, it connotates different things for different people (i.e. a very small, quaint, dwelling) but the book is aimed, as the subtitle makes clear, and anyone who owns a vacation home or even campgrounds or cabins. There is legal advice that should be very helpful to even the most uninformed layman. Be advised, this is a terrible market right now for property, both for the prospective buyer and the owner. This is perhaps an odd volume for these economic times, but nonetheless if you have a specific need for a book like this - it's hard not to suggest grabbing a copy.

This is an absolute must read for anyone who jointly owns or is thinking of jointly owing a cottage. We wish this book had been available several years ago.

Do not hesitate, order yours today.

I am a professional financial planner with over two decades of experience. It is with this background that I tell you that Saving the Family Cottage is an essential book for three very different readers... professional advisors, do-it-yourselfer's, and those who will hire advisors to develop the succession plan.

For professional advisors... The authors clearly lay out the advantages and disadvantages of the personal, financial and legal strategies used to successfully transition the vacation home. Saving the Family Cottage provides a ready reference to be used when meeting with clients to discuss the issue of the vacation home. Professional advisors know that parents and grandparents often have difficulty visualizing that their children and/or grandchildren
* May feel differently about the vacation home, or disagree with each other.
* May have different demands on resources, and even pressure from creditors
* Are influenced by practical considerations including partners/spouses who don't share their childhood memories and emotional attachment to the place.
Delaying and/or avoiding the issue doesn't help. In fact, inaction may lead to precisely the kind of situations that they wished to avoid.

For the Do-It-Yourselfer... As a professional advisor, I acknowledge that there are many financial matters that people can and should handle themselves, but this kind of succession and estate planning is not one of them... However, if you can't help it... if you just must do everything yourself (you know who you are) then, this book is important. The authors have done much to convey complex family and legal issues in everyday English. I don't think you will find a better source or resource outside of law school.

Finally, for those who will hire and develop the succession plan, this is a terrific primer. It will help you interview, select and hire the advisor. The examples and stories about what can go wrong will urge you to take reasoned appropriate action. It will clarify what and why your advisors are making some recommendations and not others. That alone can save a lot of billable time.

Kudos to NOLO for publishing another useful book about legal issues that require more than a legal document.

My sisters and I jointly share a house that our parents left to us. We are all very accommodating and nice, and haven't had any real problems. But there have been disagreements, and as this book points out, there can be cases when circumstances force one member of the family to make a choice that is not popular. Also, we have different tastes. Getting a clear document and mode of ownership in place about how to resolve issues, and also how to avoid unpleasant tax issues will be a big improvement for our case, and in one other case I know (my cousins), could have potentially saved a family feud.

I highly recommend this well written book.

SAVING THE FAMILY COTTAGE. Another great and easy to read resource from NOLO!

This book is a great ongoing planning resource and has more uses than being just a guide for succession planning for a family cottage, cabin, camp or vacation home.

In a nut shell, this book shares the benefits and pitfalls of how title can be held and how the different aspects of property administration/management/sharing are most easily handled.

Like the NOLO book titled ESTATE PLANNING FOR BLENDED FAMILIES, the table of contents is clear and concise with the chapter headings and subheadings offering an overview of the topics covered.

The bottom line seems to be that an LLC generally comes the closest to meeting the most expectations and contingencies that can arise.

In our situation, we do not currently own a "family" vacation home that we have shared since our youth. As adults, we have been investigating the possibility of going together to buy a vacation residence that we can all share the use of and use as a rental when we don't need it. For us, this makes better sense than investing in vacation time shares. We would own the real estate and we would control it. The information in this book is exactly what we were looking for. We have been "noodling" over how to hold title, whether or not tenants in common would work (it won't) or using a trust or some kind of contract, or just HOW to do this so that we are all protected. This book answered ALL our questions and put it all together for us.

For individuals who already have a vacation home you want to keep in the family, this book will share all the nitty gritty things you need to consider.

--WE

A family cottage is a blessing which can also turn into a curse and divide families along the way.

This is an excellent and innovative legal treatment of the problem of what to do with a family vacation home. The approaches recommended include some quite innovative legal techniques.

While the book is no substitute for sound estate planning advice, it does point out the pitfalls that can happen as a cottage transitions through generatiosn of the family . . . and gives good advice for strategies in dealing with them.