Estate Planning for Blended Families in Rhode Island: Protecting Every Child

In a first marriage with shared children, simple estate planning works: leave everything to your spouse, and when the second spouse dies, the children inherit. The interests are aligned.

In a second marriage with children from prior relationships, those interests directly conflict. If you leave everything to your new spouse, your biological children from a first marriage have no legal guarantee of ever seeing a dollar. Rhode Island law makes this problem worse in some ways — and easier to solve in others.

The Accidental Disinheritance Problem

Here is the most common scenario: you remarry and write a simple will leaving everything to your new spouse, trusting them to eventually pass assets to all the children. Then your new spouse:

• Remarries again and leaves everything to the third spouse
• Changes their own will after your death to exclude your children
• Spends down the inheritance during their remaining lifetime
• Becomes incapacitated, and a court-appointed guardian prioritizes their care over future distributions

Your biological children inherit nothing. This happens constantly, and it is entirely preventable.

Stepchildren Have No Automatic Inheritance Rights

Under Rhode Island intestacy law (RIGL Title 33), stepchildren do not inherit anything from a stepparent — even if the stepparent raised them from infancy. Only biological and legally adopted children qualify as "issue" for inheritance purposes.

This means:

• If your stepparent dies without a will, you get nothing
• If your biological parent dies without a will, you inherit — but only from your biological parent, not from the stepparent who may control most of the family's assets
• The surviving stepparent has no legal obligation to provide for you

If you want stepchildren to inherit, you must name them explicitly in your will or estate plan. Rhode Island will not do it for you.

The Elective Share Complication

Rhode Island's spousal elective share under § 33-28-1 gives a surviving spouse a life estate in all individually held real property plus a share of the personal probate estate. You cannot completely disinherit your current spouse through a will alone.

But here is where Rhode Island is unusual: assets held in a revocable living trust are excluded from the elective share. This creates a planning opportunity for blended families. By moving assets into a trust, you can control exactly what your current spouse receives and what goes directly to your children from a prior marriage.

A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement waiving the elective share (enforceable under § 33-28-3) provides additional protection, but both strategies should be used together for maximum security.

Strategies That Work

QTIP Trust (Qualified Terminable Interest Property): Your spouse receives income from the trust for life, but the trust principal passes to your biological children after your spouse's death. Your spouse cannot redirect the assets. This is the gold standard for blended family estate planning.

Life insurance designated directly to children: Name your biological children as beneficiaries on a separate life insurance policy. This asset passes outside probate, outside the spousal elective share, and outside your spouse's control entirely.

TOD deeds for specific properties: If you want your children to inherit the family cabin or a specific rental property, a Transfer on Death deed (available starting January 2027 in Rhode Island) passes the property directly to your children at death — without going through probate or being subject to the elective share.

Separate beneficiary designations: Keep retirement accounts and life insurance policies with beneficiary designations that reflect your actual wishes — not the default "surviving spouse" selection. Review these annually.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming your will overrides beneficiary designations (it does not)
• Leaving everything to your spouse without a trust, hoping they will treat all children fairly
• Failing to update beneficiary designations after remarriage
• Ignoring the elective share — your spouse may claim against the will regardless of your intentions
• Commingling pre-marital assets with marital accounts, making them harder to trace and protect

Building Your Plan

The Rhode Island Basic Estate Planning Kit includes worksheets for coordinating wills, beneficiary designations, and trust strategies across blended family structures. The estate tax estimator helps you assess whether your combined household assets approach the $1,838,056 threshold — which is especially relevant when two households merge their assets in a second marriage.

See more Rhode Island guides →