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When Jennifer Lester Mulridge remembers favourite moments at the cottage that’s been in her family for generations, she recalls being cold, but happy.
She spent hot summer days sitting in a wet bathing suit after swimming, watching movies in the cool basement. She tobogganed on cold winter days on the nearby sand dunes of Sandbanks Provincial Park in Prince Edward County.
Lester Mulridge holds the memories dear — though she admits she’s not sure how the cottage fits into her own future.
While she’s grateful for what she calls the privilege of growing up there, Lester Mulridge worries about what will become of the cottage — specifically, what will happen when she and seven other family members inherit the property and all the responsibilities that come with it.
“I go back and forth, I guess I’m not even sure,” she said, though she’s convinced something needs to change to ensure a smooth transition. “It can’t stay the same.”
Lester Mulridge set out to explore succession planning in a video with CBC Ottawa’s Creator Network.
Decades of family memories and tradition are tied to a property in Prince Edward County, but what the future looks like is a different story. Jennifer Lester Mulridge put together “Our Outlet River Cottage: A Complicated Legacy” with the help of cousin Alejandra Harrison for CBC Ottawa’s Creator Network.
Between dividing labour equally, managing finances and interpersonal responsibilities, Lester Mulridge sees a big task ahead — one she fears might fall disproportionally to her because she lives nearby.
“We are fast approaching a critical juncture in our family,” she said.
Lester Mulridge’s mother Mary Lynn Lester, 71, also worries that when she and the two other co-owners are no longer around, things will become complicated.
The family has grown with each generation since her parents bought the land, and soon the responsibility of its stewardship will be split between more people than ever before — meaning more people who need to communicate.
(Submitted by Annette Ainsbury)
“Everybody has their own opinions on how things should be done,” Lester told her daughter in a recorded interview for her short doc.
Lester said she knows it can be hard when emotion can overcome logic with these decisions.
Planning for succession
It’s a familiar dilemma to Michelle Kelly, editor in chief of Cottage Life magazine. She said cottage succession planning is a “huge concern” for her readers, many of whom are hoping to manage sharing a property among siblings who may have differing wants, needs or financial constraints.
She said decisions are complicated because of the heightened emotions involved.
“They taught their child how to swim there off the dock, or it’s the place that reminds them the most of their relatives who have passed on,” she said.
Kelly recommends working with a lawyer or estate planner to build a plan. It could address details from who fills up the gas tank on a shared boat to what happens if one of the owners gets divorced.
“You want to be able to think about it clear-eyed ahead of time and … be armed with the knowledge to deal with that when the crisis actually comes,” she said.
Lester Mulridge remembered hearing that some of her siblings had talked about their inheritance once, more than two decades ago, but the family had somehow avoided the topic since.
At this year’s annual Canada Day reunion, she asked them to come together — including one who Skyped in from Europe — to finally talk about succession planning, a conversation she captured on film.
“It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but of course it’s important to get it started and start talking about these things because our parents are getting older,” said Lester Mulridge’s youngest sister Maggie Eldridge.
Eldridge said she already sees disagreements arising in decisions that need to be made now. The kitchen, for example, needs to be updated, but how they go about that is still up for discussion.
When Lester Mulridge asked her own three kids for their thoughts on what happens next at the cottage, they described it as “their favourite place on Earth.”
While the family doesn’t have a full succession plan written out just yet, Jennifer said the Canada Day gathering was a start.
“The takeaway was we need a lot more of these conversations,” she said. “For this complicated cottage legacy, I think anything’s on the table.”
