Scenario Introductions

eState Planner uses 3 scenarios to create a complete plan -Surviving Spouse, Descendants Only and No Descendants. Learn more about scenarios here.

Gifts made in the Surviving Spouse scenario assume that the spouse is alive as a condition to the gift.   A gift in a scenario other than the Surviving Spouse scenario assumes either that the spouse is not alive (or if the Surviving Spouse scenario is empty that the client does not have a spouse)  

If the Surviving Spouse scenario is not empty, there are two scenario intros:

• Gifts made only if the spouse survives.
• Gifts made only if the spouse does not survive.

If a gift applies regardless of whether the spouse is alive, or if there is no spouse, no scenario introduction is used.

Less typical situations

In some cases, a gift may be conditional on whether the planning in the Descendants Only scenario is applicable or not. To flag these situations, you will see an Advisor Insight alerting that you should consider copying the gift to the No Descendants scenario or adding an additional condition. The text in the Will also inserts a placeholder for an additional condition.

For example, a gift is made to a charity only in the Descendants Only scenario, with no similar gift in the No Descendants Scenario (even though there is a distribution in the No Descendant scenario). Typically, gifts of this kind are made in both Descendants Only and No Descendants scenario. This can be done by using the Copy To option to copy the identical gift to the No Descendants scenario. 

What should the condition say?

If the difference is intentional, you are reminded to consider adding a further manual condition. That condition will likely relate to the beneficiaries covered by the Descendants Only scenario.

Some examples:

If all possible beneficiaries of Descendants Only scenario (including gift-overs) are all of the client's issue you could use: "If I leave issue alive at the Survival Date" 

If all possible beneficiaries are all of the client's children and all actual or potential grandchildren you could use "If I have children or grandchildren alive at the Survival Date".

If you have multiple different beneficiaries with multiple gift-overs, consider using "If at least one beneficiary in paragraph [the residuary section for the Descendants Only scenario] is alive"

Similarly, the Ultimate Distribution intro has also been modified. Now eState Planner checks to see if the beneficiaries of No Descendants scenario cover all of the client's issue. In that case it still includes "namely where I have no issue". Otherwise, it removes that part of the introduction.