Just Say No to Your Inheritance?

In a documentary film about the band Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, one of the band’s founding members, described what a disorienting experience it was to acquire wealth suddenly. Disorienting experiences and Pink Floyd are not always a bad combination, as anyone who has ever smoked weed before attending a Pink Floyd planetarium show can attest. In the same documentary, Waters spoke of taking hallucinogens on the Greek island of Patmos, and to hear him tell it, the experience was downright transcendent. By contrast, getting rich was not the fun kind of disorienting. It made him question everything he had ever believed and left him with the nagging feeling that, if his old life was all a lie, perhaps his new life was, too. If the probate court notifies you that you are a beneficiary of an estate it is administering, and all you feel is dread, perhaps you should listen to your gut. According to New York law, it is possible for heirs to repudiate their inheritance. For help renouncing an inheritance or administering an estate where one of the heirs has renounced his or her inheritance, contact a Bronx probate attorney.

Is Inherited Property a Trojan Horse?

Most people wish they could inherit money, but there are plenty of reasons that someone might not want to claim an inheritance that a deceased family member has left for them. They might have been estranged from the decedent, and even if they need the money, they might not want anything to do with money that belonged to their sworn enemy, even if that enemy is a blood relative. Likewise, the renouncing heir might be in a better financial position than the other beneficiaries, so the renouncing heir might want to let other family members benefit from the inheritance instead of claiming it for himself or herself. Some people even decide to renounce an inheritance after crunching the numbers and realizing that the tax burden on the inherited money will be so high that it would be less expensive not to inherit it at all.

How to Renounce Your Inheritance

Whatever your reasons for deciding to renounce your inheritance, the probate court will honor your decision to renounce it as long as you follow the proper legal procedures for renunciation of interest in an estate. Before you begin the process, you should meet with a probate lawyer and discuss the implications of your decision, to make sure that this is what you want to do. After that, you should sign and notarize a renunciation document; your lawyer can help you draft one or review the renunciation document that you have drafted. Next you file the document with the probate court; once you do this, the renunciation is irrevocable. The deadline for filing the renunciation document is nine months after the decedent’s death.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney

An estate planning lawyer can help you make practical decisions about renunciation of inheritance.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2025/06/27/how-disclaim-inheritance-why/84330310007/