3 Tips For Sharing Family Heirlooms With Your Adult Children

Family heirlooms are a great way to maintain a rich family history and continually remember the people who came before you. However, if you have family heirlooms that you’re hoping to pass down to future generations, it can be hard to know exactly when and how to do this. Luckily, there are some guidelines that you can follow to help both you and your adult children be happy with the way these family heirlooms are handled.

To help you with this, here are three tips for sharing family heirlooms with your adult children. 

Don’t Wait For Your Will

For many people, family heirlooms really only get passed down to children after a death and during the ready of a will. However, if you want to get to enjoy seeing your adult children appreciate and enjoy the family heirloom that you plan to pass down to them, you may not want to wait until your will to give this to them. 

By giving your family heirlooms to your adult children now, you can allow them to make an even stronger bond to these items. They can get a lot more use out of them, like wearing the family vintage Tiffany heart necklace to a special occasion for them or displaying something in their home now that reminds them of their ties to family. 

Consider What They’re Drawn To

When you have family heirlooms that you’re hoping to pass down to your adult children, you’ll want to choose pieces that they will love and appreciate for years to come. The last thing you want to have happen is to give a family heirloom to an adult child who doesn’t want it and then either lets it fall into disrepair or gets rid of it completely.

To ensure that something like this doesn’t happen, try to match the heirlooms that you give to each child with what they’re drawn to. You can figure this out by asking them to pick out family heirloom pieces that they’d like to have or just  by observing them and their unique interests or close connections within your family. 

Welcome Repurposing

While you might like the idea of each of your family heirlooms staying in their original form as they’re passed down from generation to generation, if you want family heirlooms to be something exciting and now seen as a burden, you might want to think about how you feel about your adult children repurposing some of the family heirlooms they might be given. 

For things like jewelry, removing gems or stones and putting them in a different setting could be a great adjustment to some heirlooms. Additionally, if there are articles of clothing being passed down, allowing for alterations so that they can actually be worn should be welcomed.

If you want to share some of your family heirlooms with your adult children now, consider implementing the tips mentioned above to help you in doing this.