The Street:  “The most common refrain I hear when assisting clients with estate planning is that they want to treat their children equally. It's a parent's instinctual, default position. However, it can be a flawed position to lead from. In some cases, you might need to treat your children differently when it comes to gifting and estate planning.  Notice I said differently but not unequally.

So what are some examples of treating your adult children differently:

• Not naming all of your children as successor executors

•Gifting the annual gift exclusion of $13,000 outright to some children while putting it in trust for another child

•Leaving one child's inheritance outright while leaving another child's inheritance in trust.”