Over the past year, the media has become fixated on the fact that millennials and Generation X will soon inherit trillions of dollars from the baby boomer generation. What many of these articles fail to cover is that baby boomers themselves are still inheriting from the generation that preceded them. Regardless of the age, many people in Pennsylvania feel an emotional attachment to the inherited property, especially when it comes from parents or a spouse.
According to the New York Times, those emotions are especially strong for baby boomers. Many people from this generation hang on to the property for years, unwilling to do anything with it. They may take years to sell homes and may allow a quarter of a million dollars to sit in a checking account or low-yielding treasury bonds. However, after a while, many are able to think of the property as their own and soon use it for riskier investments to earn higher yields.
When the bond between the person who inherits and the giver was strained, the approach is often a little different. Some people may feel vindictive and destroy the property or donate it to a cause or political party the deceased was particularly against. In these instances, wealth often does not remain in the family for long.
CNBC notes that if the inherited property is a home, heirs may take a lot of steps to make the inheritance more beneficial. The first step is to carefully go through all remaining belongings in the home. Heirs should then decide if they plan to sell, rent or live in the home. Note that people who decide to sell the home may take advantage of a tax benefit that may reduce what the government considers a capital gain.