Dear Mr. Premack: I am a widowed senior citizen with one child, a daughter. She is married to a worthless man who refuses to work and has not done so since day one of their marriage. How do I keep him and any member of his family from being her heirs if she predeceases him? I plan to leave her my house, but do not want him to own it or to ever live in it. Does Texas law give him any right to her inheritance? Mrs. NBG

You do not control items your daughter owns. Her husband has various legal rights in her property under the Texas marital property system. Additionally, he would benefit from whatever largess she directs his way in her Will or other estate planning arrangements. You cannot control or stop those legal rights.

You do control items you own. If you fail to make a Will or other estate planning arrangements, you fail to exercise that control and your assets pass directly to your daughter when you die. While you want to allow your daughter to benefit from your assets (including your house) after you die, you want to exclude her husband.

It is vital that you make a legally binding estate plan that properly exercises the controls necessary to exclude her husband. Her benefits can be structured in a way that excludes her husband from receiving anything.

Two methods come to mind. First, you could appoint an outsider as Executor of your Will – perhaps a bank or a trusted friend. You could instruct the Executor to sell your home after you die, and to then give the proceeds to your daughter. That way her husband will never have the opportunity to reside there or to become its owner (unless he spends his own money to buy it back, which sounds doubtful).

The money your daughter receives would be her separate property, and would be under her sole management. If she is instructed properly, she can keep the funds segregated from their community property. Her husband would not have any control over the funds nor would he receive any money directly, except that any new interest paid on the funds would belong ½ to him as community property.

Even then, he would not have access to that community property share unless they divorce or unless she dies. But the largest weakness in this idea is that she can voluntarily give him the money, and since they are still married he must have some influence over her.

The second method eliminates that weakness by segregating your estate from the very beginning. You create a trust (either in your Will or as a Living Trust) and name that trust as the sole heir to your estate. You select an independent Trustee (again, a bank or trusted friend) to manage the assets after your death.

In the trust, you instruct that the house be available to your daughter on condition that her husband is never allowed to reside there. If they divorce she will have a home. Or you could allow the Trustee to sell the house so long as the proceeds remain in the trust for your daughter’s benefit.

Any funds held by the trust belong to the trust. Interest paid on those funds is not community property, so her husband has no legal right to it. If they divorce, the trust would not be involved because it does not belong to either of them.

If she dies, the trust can direct any remaining assets to other people of your selection. The assets would not pass according to your daughter’s Will, so she could never volunteer to give it to her husband. See a qualified estate planning or elder law attorney to discuss these methods and how they can be fine-tuned for your specific needs.