Most estate planning guides are written for a straightforward situation: two biological parents, children who are all citizens, no one with a disability, and no complicated family structure. That family exists, but it's not the only one. A lot of families in Montana have a more layered picture, and the standard advice doesn't always apply.
This is personal to me. My own family includes adopted children, foster children, a child with special needs, and daughters who married foreign nationals. Each of those situations creates specific planning questions that a basic will or a one-size-fits-all approach won't answer. If your family looks anything like mine, here's what you need to know when estate planning.
Foster Children and Adopted Children Are Not the Same Under the Law
Once a child is legally adopted, they have the same inheritance rights as a biological child. If you die without a will, an adopted child will inherit under Montana's intestate succession laws just as any other child would, and if you do have a will or trust, they are treated the same as biological children unless the document says otherwise.
Foster children are a different story. A foster placement does not create a legal parent-child relationship, which means foster children have no automatic inheritance rights. If you want to provide for a foster child in your estate plan, you have to name them explicitly as a beneficiary in your will, trust, or on account beneficiary designations. Without that, they receive nothing, regardless of how long they lived in your home or how strong the relationship was.
This is a detail that can be missed when families work from generic estate planning templates. If you have foster children you want to include, make sure your documents specifically name them.
Planning for a Child with Special Needs Requires Extra Consideration
Leaving money directly to a child who receives government benefits like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicaid can cause more harm than good. SSI has a strict asset limit — in 2026, an individual must have less than $2,000 in countable assets to qualify. An inheritance that exceeds that threshold, even a modest one, can disqualify your child from benefits they depend on.
Two tools exist specifically to address this: Special Needs Trusts and ABLE accounts.
A Special Needs Trust (SNT) holds assets for your child's benefit without those assets counting as their personal property. The trust can pay for things that government programs don't cover, like technology, recreation, personal care items, and transportation, while your child maintains their eligibility for SSI and Medicaid. Third-party SNTs, which are funded by parents or grandparents, are the most common tool for this kind of planning.
ABLE accounts work differently. They function like a 529 savings account but are designed for disability-related expenses. One important change took effect in 2026: the SECURE 2.0 Act expanded eligibility from individuals whose disability onset was before age 26 to those whose disability onset was before age 46. ABLE accounts give individuals with disabilities more direct access to funds and can support greater independence, but they work best as a supplement to a Special Needs Trust rather than a replacement for one.
One mistake families make is listing a child with special needs as a direct beneficiary on a retirement account or life insurance policy. Even a well-intentioned inheritance routed the wrong way can disrupt years of careful planning. Review every beneficiary designation with this in mind.
When a Son-in-Law or Daughter-in-Law Is Not a U.S. Citizen
If your child is married to a foreign national, the standard rules around spousal inheritance don't apply the way most people assume. Under federal law, U.S. citizens can transfer unlimited assets to a citizen spouse without gift or estate tax. That unlimited marital deduction does not extend to non-citizen spouses.
At death, the primary planning tool for non-citizen spouses is a Qualified Domestic Trust, or QDOT. A QDOT allows assets to pass to a non-citizen spouse while deferring estate tax, with the government collecting tax as distributions are made from the trust. Without a QDOT in place, assets passing to a non-citizen spouse above the applicable exemption amount may be subject to estate tax at death. This is a planning gap that affects more families than you might expect, particularly in communities with strong ties to other countries.
If your child's spouse is not a U.S. citizen, have this conversation sooner rather later.
Blended Families Need Explicit Plans
In a blended family, the default rules almost never produce the outcome you actually want. Without clear estate documents, assets can easily pass to the wrong people, stepchildren can be inadvertently cut out, and biological children from a prior relationship can end up with less than you intended.
The key with estate planning for blended families is specificity. Every beneficiary designation on every account needs to be reviewed. Trusts can be structured to provide for a surviving spouse during their lifetime while preserving assets for your biological children at the second death. If you have stepchildren you want to include, they need to be named explicitly. If there are stepchildren you don't intend to include, that also needs to be clear.
Blended family estate planning is one of the situations where working with both a financial advisor and an estate planning attorney makes the most sense.
A Few Things Every Complex Family Should Do Now
Review every beneficiary designation on retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and transfer-on-death accounts. These designations override your will, so if they're outdated or misaligned with your plan, your documents won't save you.
If you have a child with special needs, make sure no account or policy names them as a direct beneficiary. Route those assets through a Special Needs Trust instead.
If your family includes a non-citizen spouse, ask whether a QDOT should be part of your plan and make sure your annual gifting strategy is being used.
If you have foster children you want to provide for, name them explicitly in your documents. Don't assume they are included.
Revisit your plan after any major life event, like a marriage, a new child, a change in a family member's citizenship status, or a change in a beneficiary's disability benefits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a grandparent set up a Special Needs Trust for a grandchild, or does it have to be a parent? Any family member can fund a third-party Special Needs Trust, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, or siblings. The trust is established by the person doing the planning, not the beneficiary, and can be funded through a will, a direct contribution, or a life insurance policy.
What happens to a Special Needs Trust when the beneficiary passes away? Unlike assets left directly to an individual, a third-party Special Needs Trust does not have a Medicaid payback requirement at the beneficiary's death. This is one of the meaningful differences between a third-party SNT and a first-party SNT.
If a foreign national son-in-law or daughter-in-law eventually becomes a U.S. citizen, does the estate plan need to be updated? Yes, and this is a change worth acting on promptly. Once a spouse becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen, the unlimited marital deduction applies, which means assets can transfer between spouses without estate or gift tax limitations. If a QDOT was set up in anticipation of the non-citizen status, it may no longer be necessary, and the plan should be reviewed to reflect the new citizenship.
If you'd like to talk through any of these situations, give our team a call. We work with families across Montana who are navigating exactly these kinds of questions: (406) 657-9621
This information is not intended as tax or legal advice. Please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation.