Estate Planning for Chosen Family, Blended Lives, and Nontraditional Paths
Estate Planning for Chosen Family, Blended Lives, and Nontraditional Paths
Legal love letters for the people who matter most
By Brandon J Miller CFP®, CLU®, MS, ADPA℠, ChFC®, Brio Financial Group
Key Takeaways:
- Do I really need estate planning if I'm married now? Yes. Marriage helps, but it may not cover everything for blended families, multi-parent situations, or chosen family arrangements.
- What happens if I don't have any estate plan in place? Typically, everything defaults to your blood family following a legal family tree: spouse, kids, parents, then siblings. If that's not your people, you need a plan.
- Does an estate plan have to be expensive and complicated? Nope! A handwritten will scribbled on a napkin can be legally valid in many cases. Starting is way more important than making it perfect.
For decades, estate planning has assumed a specific family structure. Think married couples, biological children, and inheritance that flows in predictable directions.
But what if your family doesn't fit the template? What if you're:
Unmarried partners building a life together
A blended family with stepparents who have no legal rights to kids they're helping raise
A single person whose chosen family means infinitely more than biological relatives
In these scenarios, the question isn't whether you need estate planning; it's what exactly you need to do, and how to actually get it done.
Think of this as writing legal love letters to the people who matter most—because the law should protect the people you'd call at 2am, not just the ones you share DNA with.
Related: Four Reasons Millennials Need an Estate Strategy
Wanted, Dead or Alive: Why You Definitely Need an Estate Plan
Here's the thing many people miss: Estate planning isn't just about what happens after you die. It's about protecting yourself and your people during some of life's hardest moments, including when you're alive but can't speak for yourself.
Medical Decision-Making Authority
If you're in an accident or facing a serious illness and can't make your own medical decisions, someone needs to speak for you. Without a healthcare directive in place, the law typically follows a default hierarchy: spouse, adult children, parents, siblings.
For many families, that system can create real problems. Maybe your parents don't accept your partner, or you're estranged from your siblings. Maybe the person you trust most to make life-or-death decisions isn't related to you at all.
A healthcare directive (sometimes called an advance directive or living will) lets you name the person you actually want making those calls.
Financial Decision-Making Authority
The same principle applies to your finances: If you become incapacitated and can't manage your own money, who steps in to pay your bills, manage your accounts, and handle your financial affairs?
Without a financial power of attorney (POA), it defaults to your legal next of kin. To help ensure the right person takes care of your finances in your stead, you need to name them explicitly in a power of attorney document. We work directly with your attorney (and any other members of your legal team) to keep your financial POA aligned with your wishes.
Where Your Legacy Goes
Many people donate to causes they care about during their lifetime: organizations that fought for their rights, supported them through hard times, or are building a better future for the next generation.
If your blood family doesn't need the money or wasn't there for you, you might prefer to leave your assets to a cause that reflects your values.
For many in the LGBTQ+ community, this is particularly meaningful. The AIDS crisis and the fight for marriage equality created a culture of giving that runs deep. Estate planning gives you the chance to extend that legacy beyond your lifetime, supporting the organizations that made your life possible or funding the future you want to see.
Whatever causes you hold most dear, we help you craft a plan that optimizes your giving while potentially minimizing the tax burden on you and your recipient of choice.
The "Marriage Solves Everything" Myth
Marriage equality was a massive win, and we’ll always be celebrating that. But let's be clear: a marriage certificate doesn't automatically solve all your estate planning needs.
Yes, marriage can provide important legal protections. If your estate goes through probate (the court process for distributing assets after death), judges will generally follow state law that prioritizes your spouse. The legal system is on your side in that sense.
But here's what marriage doesn't do:
Account for non-married partners who deserve protection
Help if you're in a multi-party relationship (because most legal structures are built around two people)
Clarify who makes medical decisions if both spouses are incapacitated simultaneously
Help with complex custody arrangements or second/third parent situations
Protect stepparents who have no biological or adoptive tie to kids they're raising
We see this especially with younger couples who think, "We got married, so we're covered." You still need wills, healthcare directives, powers of attorney, and proper beneficiary designations, just like everyone else. And depending on your family structure, you may even need additional documents to fully protect everyone involved.
Estate Planning for Nontraditional Family Structures: 3 Scenarios That Need Extra Attention
This is where estate planning for blended family situations gets particularly important—and where the right planning can make all the difference.
Cohabitation Agreements for Unmarried Partners
If you're not married but you're building a life together, a cohabitation agreement clarifies what the law doesn't automatically define.
This document covers:
Who owns what property (especially if you buy a home together)
How shared expenses get handled
What happens to jointly owned assets if you split up
What happens if one of you passes away
Without a cohabitation agreement, you may have little to no legal claim to each other or to assets you've built together. If your partner dies without a will, everything could go to their blood family, even if you've been together for decades. A cohabitation agreement creates legal protection where marriage laws don't apply.
Second and Third Parent Adoptions in California
If you're raising kids in a non-traditional family structure, establishing legal parentage is critical for everyone's protection.
In California, we can facilitate second parent adoptions (when one parent in a two-parent family isn't the biological parent) and even third parent adoptions (yes, three legal parents!).
Legal parentage matters for:
Parenting time: Who does the child spend time with, and what does that schedule look like?
Decision-making authority: Who gets to decide on medical care, schools, summer camps, and other major life decisions?
Financial responsibility: Who is legally and financially responsible for supporting the child?
These rights are intensely state-specific. Post-Roe, the landscape has shifted dramatically, especially around surrogacy. If you're navigating parentage issues, working with someone who understands your state's specific laws is essential.
When Estate Planning Gets Really Complex: Big, Beautiful Families
Sometimes families are beautifully, wonderfully complicated in ways that require thoughtful planning.
Let me paint you a picture: We work with a wonderful older gay couple, both doing well financially. Each of them also has a boyfriend. One of those boyfriends has a wife and three kids. The wife also has a boyfriend. You can pause here and draw a diagram if you need to (we definitely did).
Everyone's enmeshed financially in different ways, from who lives where to who pays for what and who inherits what if someone dies. There are kids in the mix, but they're not connected to the original couple. It's a whole beautiful, complicated web.
Planning for a family like this requires:
Individual wills for everyone involved
Clear beneficiary designations on all accounts
Possibly cohabitation agreements between multiple parties
Trusts to protect specific assets for specific people
Ongoing communication so everyone understands the plan and their role in it
Is it complex? Absolutely. Is it impossible? Not even close. This is the work we do every day, and we approach it with the same care and precision we bring to every client relationship.
It Doesn't Have to Be Fancy (But You Do Have to Do It)
Here's something that might surprise you: You can literally scribble your wishes on a cocktail napkin, and in many cases, it can be considered a valid will.
Obviously, we recommend something more thorough and legally sound. But the point stands: Starting is more important than perfection. A basic will that you actually create can be infinitely more valuable than a perfect estate plan that only exists inside your head.
At minimum, most people need:
A will to name guardians for kids and direct where your assets go
Healthcare directive (also called advance directive or living will) for medical decisions
Financial power of attorney for someone to manage your money if you can't
Beneficiary designations on all accounts (retirement, life insurance, bank accounts)
If you're unmarried, in a multi-party relationship, or have chosen family to protect, we may want to add a:
Cohabitation agreement to define your partnership terms
Trust to avoid probate and protect specific people
Second or third parent adoption paperwork if kids are involved
Related: Your Estate Management Checklist
You don't have to tackle all of this at once or figure it out alone. We're here to help you make your own personal estate planning “checklist,” so you can feel confident everything is in order.
We’re Here to Help You Protect Your People
It's completely normal to want to avoid conversations about death or worst-case scenarios. But here's what we know from working with families like yours: If you're building a life outside traditional structures where your family is chosen, blended, non-traditional, or just beautifully complicated, the legal system won't automatically protect you.
We've worked with every kind of family structure you can imagine (and probably a few you can't). We understand the nuances, the complications, and the emotional weight of these decisions. And we're here to walk through it with you, step by step, in a way that feels manageable and even empowering.
If you have any questions about your personal estate plan or if your life has shifted (new partner, new kid, estranged family member you need to remove from documents) let’s revisit your plan together. Life changes, and your estate plan should change with it.
If you're not yet working with Brio Financial Group and you're ready to create a plan designed to honor your real life, we invite you to learn more about our approach to nontraditional financial planning in our complimentary Make it Happen meeting. We've seen it all, we've planned for it all, and we're here for it.