More and more, Jane Austen characters would fit in U.S.

I went online recently to explore certain taboo subjects. I looked up words we don’t talk about in polite company. Certainly not in front of the children. Words like “trust fund,” “inheritance,” “aristocracy.”

I’m interested in the fact that when it comes to these concepts, we don’t openly agree on what kind of society we want.

For example, it’s clear to me from the major tax reform of December — which raised the estate tax exemption for a married couple to $22.36 million from the previous $11.18 million exemption — that we as a society want more trust fund kids. Trust fund kids are great. Sure- ly, despite our political differences, that’s something we can all come together around as a nation?

Speaking of which, in the past year I agreed to be a trustee for some family members. I received copies of their “last will and testament” documents. I’m really a “backup” trustee, in the sense that I’m a trustee only in the unlikely circumstance that my relatives die young, while their children are quite young themselves.

A Wall Street Journal article on trust funds lists two big mistakes in estate planning:

1. Choosing the wrong trustee.

2. Giving money too early to young people.

Clearly my relatives did well picking a trustee.

But what is the right age of inheritance?

A main point of the written will on which I am named trustee is to ensure that if my relatives die early, their two children do not receives big piles of money at too early an age. They stand to receive one-third of the inheritance upon reaching their 30th birthdays, and the remaining two-thirds on their 35th birthdays. If their parents live a long and full life, the children will inherit money when they are significantly older than that, there will be no restriction on their inheritance, and my own role becomes unnecessary, as we all hope it will be.

The idea here, according to the relative who asked me to be the trustee, is to delay as long as possible the pile of money that her girls could inherit. I asked her how and why she chose those ages. Why not 25? Or 45? Why not give it all to them?

“I just came up with those ages based on my own experience and my reading that most young people who inherit money lose it before long,” said the mother of the girls. “We ran them past the attorney and he seemed to agree, so we went with it.”

So not a lot science, just common sense.

I hope you realize I was being sarcastic above about trust fund kids. My relatives — like most

MICHAEL TAYLOR