When dealing with estate planning, many families spend a lot of
time dealing with emotional assets that may not have significant
monetary value, and financial assets with significant monetary
value, but not so much emotional value. The family cottage is
generally an asset with a lot of value and plenty of emotion.
Due to the myriad of other types of planning that do not work
well for family cottages, passing the family cottage on to the next
generation is exceptionally problematic.
The topics I will address in this memo include:
1. importance of facts and assumptions;
2. importance of pre-planning and planning;
3. main options; and
4. being realistic.
I will address each one of them in turn. For discussion
purposes, I refer to all recreational property as the
"cottage", but most of the comments apply equally to ski
chalets as they do to apartments in Europe or lakeside cottages in
the woods or on an island. I have also assumed the cottage has
