This the third and final blog in a series highlighting common threats to the future shared ownership among heirs of the family cottage. The first threat was heir’s failure to pay their share of expenses and the second threat was disagreements among the heirs concerning the repairs, improvements and maintenance of the cottage.

Sometimes, parents can foresee potential problems with the affordability of the cottage by the heirs and take action in their planning to address this threat. Usually this planning involves establishing an endowment fund for the cottage to be collectively managed by all the co-owner heirs with specific provisions as to when and how the funds are to be used to pay cottage expenses.

The point of this blog series as far as “threats” to the family cottage and my  similar previous blog  series identifying “real estate law surprises” the point is that all of the surprises and threats can be effectively managed by careful planning.

Unfortunately, all too often, parents ‘intend toi plan for the future family ownership of the family cottage but it never happens. Don’t let that be you!