Take 3 steps to protect your assets if you're LGBTQ, say experts: This is 'our first recommendation

[Behind the Aegis]

When it comes to money, members of the LGBTQ community can be vulnerable targets for malicious actors. Although legal protections and social acceptance have come a long way in the U.S., there's still plenty of room for improvement.

That's especially true considering the growing amount of legislation restricting transgender and nonbinary health care, challenging LGBTQ expression and censoring education on sexuality and gender identity. A record 520 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures in 2023, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

One area that many people overlook: estate planning. Making arrangements for the possibility that you die or become unable to make decisions for yourself can be difficult for anyone, but if you're a member of the LGBTQ community, you'll want to take additional steps to protect your assets.

That's because you should be the person making decisions for your future, regardless of your gender identity or sexual orientation — not a hostile family member or the law.

Here are three steps you can take to protect your assets and personal desires.

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[canuckledragger]

1. Not just your assets...but whom you choose to leave your assets to.

That's what a lot of the gay marriage thing was about...gay folks being able to use the protections that have always been available to straight couples to protect their assets...and especially, whom they leave them to.

I read too many stories of gay couples with one of them passing away and the the greedy, bigoted family moving in to take everything left over, denying the relationship even existed for the other gay person and leaving them nothing and no way to challenge the family.

I'm not gay myself, but my family acts like I've described (and would rob me blind given the chance, alive or dead)...and would be interested in seeing what kind of protections I could set up for my friends afterwords. For one thing, the family would get nothing at all, and I don't want them anywhere near my funeral when it happens, as they're famous for shedding all sorts of fake tears at funerals for people they hated and had nothing to do with most of their lives, and causing problems for the ones that actually cared.

So my big question for this kind of thing is...how does someone, gay or straight, protect loved ones from harassment, theft, retaliation, etc after you're not around anymore?

[Think. Again.]

2. This is an issue I am dealing with...

The scary part of all this is that current common law seems to always default to "Next Of Kin" when there is any doubt about who should handle a person's finances, assets, even that person's care, should they be deemed incapable of doing those things themslves.

I have only 2 siblings left, they are both extremely hostile and corrupt people, and I have been intentionally estranged from them for years.

I have explored the idea of officially removing them as my Next Of Kin but that is not a possibility. Short of getting married to someone just so they can play the role of my legal spouse, I have no option to protect myself from them other than to "bullet-proof" my paperwork, including healthcare power of attorney listing multiple back-up designees, legal POA with same, and very clear, multiple layered estate paperwork.

I do not just ignore the siblings existence in the paperwork, I call them out by name and relationship status to be omitted from consideration for anything concerning my assets or needs.

From the article: "You can bulletproof your estate planning documents by making it explicitly clear those family members are not to receive any assets or make any decisions on your behalf."

Hopefully, any questions about any of this would get to a judge who would see my intentions and respect them.

[hunter]

3. An ex girlfriend of mine married her wife in the early 'eighties.

Officially gay marriage was a long ways in the future. There was no marriage certificate but she had money and bad-ass lawyers who crafted something much the equivalent.

Their asshole fascist Christian fathers never accepted their relationship but by the the time of their wedding their fathers were dead. One of them was such an asshole I don't think anyone mourned his death but the church he tithed, and it's possible they hated him too and were only mourning the loss of his money.

Moms came around to acceptance, albeit reluctantly, once there were grandchildren. Some siblings didn't.

It's so damned sad that members of the LGBTQ community still have to deal with this shit.

Most LGBTQ people don't have access to bad-ass lawyers, especially those who are not wealthy living in those regions of the U.S.A. where they need such lawyers the most.