When Heirs Fight Over Assets With Sentimental Value

ROBIN WILLIAMS'S widow, Susan Schneider, agreed that the rainbow suspenders he wore on the television comedy ''Mork & Mindy'' should go to his children from previous marriages, but she did want the tuxedo the comedian wore at their wedding. Simple, it might seem, but not in the complicated world of blended families.

This week, nearly eight months after Mr. Williams committed suicide in his home in Northern California, his children and his third wife were in court over a part of his estate plan that many people overlook: Who is entitled to stuff with more sentimental than monetary value?

Mr. Williams left to his three children the clothing, jewelry and personal items that he had amassed before his third marriage, and that seems to include the tuxedo.

But his wife was given their home and its contents, where the tuxedo presumably hung. She has claimed in court papers that someone took personal items from that home, where Mr. Williams died, and she believes she is entitled to them. (No one seems to be contesting that a second home in Napa, Calif., and its contents go to his children.)

For most families, a desire for personal effects — a father's watch, a necklace, a set of earrings a mother wore — is less about what they are worth and more about their sentimental value. In the case of Mr. Williams, some of those personal items — like an Oscar for his role in the film ''Good Will Hunting'' or those suspenders — have real monetary value to collectors.

But trust and estate lawyers said that this case, if stripped of its Hollywood glamour, would be no different from the many cases they see of children from previous marriages battling their parent's last spouse over the smallest things.

''I've sent three sons to very expensive Ivy League schools thanks to the dysfunctional nature of estate planning for families with stepchildren,'' said William Zabel, a founding partner of the law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel.

Mr. Zabel, who represented Wendi Murdoch and Jane Welch in their divorces, recalled a case where the children locked their stepmother out of her home in Florida within 24 hours of their father's death. ''They not only locked her out of the home, but they installed their natural mother,'' Mr. Zabel said. ''She had to retreat to New York.''

In that case, not only could the stepmother not get her deceased husband's stuff, she could not get her own possessions, either.

''Most estate plans tend to focus on the big-ticket items: the house, the bank accounts, the investments,'' said Darren Wallace, a partner at the law firm Day Pitney, where he specializes in estate and trust planning, administration and litigation. ''But often it's the personal mementos that cause the most contention.''

In the Williams case, Mr. Wallace said the comedian could have put the house he lived in with his wife and all of its contents into a type of trust, called a qualified terminable interest property trust, where she would have use of it during her lifetime. After she died, ownership would pass to his children.

Such trusts, though, are normally used for assets that generate income, which goes to the surviving spouse, while preserving the principal for the children. Putting a house in such a trust could backfire, at least if the purpose was to give the house, not its value, to the children later on.</p>

''The spouse has the right to demand that the principal is income-producing, so she could have the trust sell it,'' said Laurie Ruckel, partner at Loeb & Loeb.

A simpler but more emotional solution is to make a list of the items that you want people to have, but then give that list to the executor as a letter that is not part of the estate plan. That way, if the estate is audited, the I.R.S. will not see the letter and ask for items that are on the list but no longer around.

''You don't want a client to come in every four or five months to make changes to the specific property,'' Ms. Ruckel said. ''A letter is also less costly and time-consuming for the client. They send me a sealed letter and I send them my old one back.''

Ms. Ruckel suggests that older people give all the things they want a spouse to have while they are alive, or create a very specific list that says what the spouse gets, with everything else going to the children.

Ms. Ruckel is working with a client now who does not want his third wife and his grown children to sort out money when he dies. Nor does he want there to be trusts that the two parties will share, fearing that it will cause tension and end any relationship they have.

So he is giving her a multimillion-dollar apartment in New York City, money to pay for its upkeep and a little bit more. All of the furnishings, art and jewelry in the apartment go to her. The rest of his liquid wealth goes to his two children.

Yet knowing how values can shift, he has tried to ensure that his children do not get inadvertently cut out. ''What happens if there is a catastrophic event?'' Ms. Ruckel said. ''So we capped it, and it says, 'This goes to my wife, but at no point should it be more than X percentage of my estate.' ''

If there is one rule of thumb, it is that the more specific, the better. Ms. Ruckel said her firm was called in on a case where a well-known actor had left all of the art and personal property in his apartment to his wife and all of the art and personal property in a storage facility to his daughters from a previous relationship. When the actor became ill, his wife began moving art and property from the storage unit to the apartment.

What sets off family feuds is often small things. ''If it's a watch, is that going to change any of their lives? No,'' Ms. Ruckel said. ''But it's that, 'Dad was getting an award and wore that when I was in the audience and you weren't even around.'''

In the Williams case, one catalyst seems to be his widow's use of the term ''knickknacks'' in referring to items like comic books and theater masks that he amassed over the years. His children contend that those items fueled Mr. Williams's creativity and were akin to collections assembled with thought and care, the way others might collect stamps or baseballs.

Such back and forth is not confined to blended families. Plenty of siblings do not get along, and that can lead to fights over things that cannot be as neatly divided as money or stocks.

''The kids fight over Persian rugs or one painting,'' Mr. Zabel said. ''People say, 'Dad promised me that would be mine,' and someone else says: 'What are you talking about? I've loved that since I was 5.' ''

He added, ''People don't spend any time on personal property. They don't think they need to set up a system of allocating it or saying it's up to the executor.''

Ivan Sacks, chairman of the law firm Withers Worldwide, said so-called poison pill, or ''in terrorem'' (Latin for ''in fear''), clauses can be included to stipulate that anyone contesting how assets are being split will end up with nothing.

But few families, blended or not, imagine how nasty things will get — despite ample evidence.

Sharon Klein, managing director of family office services and wealth strategies at Wilmington Trust, said she worked on a case many years ago where two sisters were deeply estranged. ''The daughters couldn't be in the same room at the same time to get the key to go into the mother's apartment,'' she said.

What ensued were months of shifting items between columns on a spreadsheet. ''In that kind of situation, what the executor struggled with was the disposition of the tangibles, which were to be divided equally,'' she said. ''What does equally mean? It's not the value of the pieces but the sentimental attachment.''

To this day, she can't remember who got the silver and the teapot, just that the settlement dragged on far longer than any parent would want.