Encanto looks like a movie about magic. A family in Colombia, a glowing candle, rooms that stretch into entire worlds, and everyone with a gift. Except Mirabel. But underneath the bright colors and Lin-Manuel Miranda songs, there’s something else going on: a story about what one generation leaves behind and what that does to the next.
In this episode of 82 Toothpicks, Ethan, Amber, and the Ambers (plus first-time guest Annika from the front desk) watch Encanto and find that Encanto estate planning is hiding in plain sight. The magic is the metaphor. What it’s actually about is generational inheritance, the weight of legacy, and what happens when a controlling family member takes over everything a deceased spouse set in motion.
The conversation doesn’t stay in a magical Colombia. It lands squarely in northwest Iowa: on family farms, inherited collections, and the families who come into the firm carrying exactly these questions.
In This Episode
- How Pedro’s sacrifice created a generational inheritance with rules, and what that looks like as an estate planning concept
- Why every magical gift in the Madrigal family eventually becomes a liability
- Abuela’s control over what her husband built fifty years ago, and what that pattern looks like in real families
- The “millennial inheritance problem”: inheriting a house full of stuff instead of actual assets
- Whether kids should be allowed to say no to a legacy, and what happens to families that never ask the question
Grandpa’s Sacrifice and the Generational Gift
The Madrigal family’s magic didn’t come from nothing. Pedro (Abuela’s husband, the grandfather the kids never knew) sacrificed himself to protect his family. That sacrifice created the magic: a glowing candle, a sentient house, and gifts that pass to each grandchild at a certain age.
Ethan connected this to estate planning almost immediately. “Grandpa left this magical inheritance. It’s generational. The whole movie has rules for how it gets passed down.” Those rules include age requirements, a ceremony, a leader who controls the process. Those are estate planning concepts in magical clothing.
The gift-giving ceremony in the movie maps directly onto what a well-designed estate plan is supposed to do: protect the next generation, pass assets at the right time, and put the right people in charge. What Encanto shows you is what happens when one of those elements goes wrong.
When Gifts Become Liabilities
Every Madrigal gift starts as a blessing. Luisa can carry mountains. Dolores can hear everything. Bruno can see the future. Isabel can make flowers bloom. But by the time you’re deep into the movie, each of those gifts has curdled into something that hurts.
Luisa is crushed by the weight of everyone’s demands. Dolores can’t sleep because she hears Luisa’s eye twitching through the walls. Bruno left the family because his gift got him blamed for every bad thing that happened. Isabel performs perfection so relentlessly she’s lost herself.
Ethan drew a direct line to what families leave behind. Are we thinking about the impact a gift will have on the people we’re giving it to? That’s the question most estate plans never ask.
“There’s an analogy to the things that we leave behind, not from a legacy perspective but from a gift-giving perspective. Are we thinking about the impact it will have on the people we’re giving it to?” — Ethan, Episode 56, 82 Toothpicks
A gift is still a gift on paper. But if it buries the person who receives it, something went wrong in the planning.
Abuela’s Grip And What It Costs Everyone
The clearest estate planning issue in Encanto isn’t the magic, it’s control. Abuela Alma has been running everything since Pedro died. She decides who gets a gift. She sets expectations for how those gifts are used. She manages the family’s relationship with the town.
And the whole time, she’s managing assets and relationships that her husband set in motion fifty years ago without ever asking whether the plan still fits.
Ethan put it plainly: “She’s trying to control everything, even though he set up the protection fifty years ago.”
This is a pattern attorneys see regularly. A spouse dies. The surviving partner steps into a controlling role, often with good intentions, and starts making decisions that weren’t really theirs to make. Kids and grandkids adapt. They perform. They carry weight they were never supposed to carry. And the cracks don’t show until they do.
“It’s a reason, not an excuse,” Ethan said about Abuela’s difficult backstory. Her trauma explains the behavior. It doesn’t justify what it costs everyone around her.
The Family Farm Problem
First-time guest Annika raised the episode’s sharpest question: when does a family legacy flip from gift to burden?
She was thinking about family farms, something a lot of northwest Iowa families know intimately. One of six kids wants to carry on the legacy. The parents feel pressure to include all six equally. And the one kid who actually wants the farm ends up navigating competing expectations while trying to keep something alive that the others may not even want.
“At what point do you sit there and be like, this is a gift rather than a burden? Because at some point it is a burden to a generation.” — Annika, Episode 56, 82 Toothpicks
Amber added a question that doesn’t get asked enough: “Are your kids allowed to say no when you give them something?”
Most families never have that conversation. They assume the kids want what they built. When nobody ever asked and it turns out the answer was complicated, the legacy that was supposed to be a gift becomes the thing that tears the family apart.
The Millennial Inheritance Problem
Amber introduced a thread that hit close to home: the growing trend of inheriting not assets, but stuff. Houses packed floor to ceiling. Collections that meant everything to a parent and nothing to the kids. Five sets of patio furniture.
That last one wasn’t hypothetical. Ethan told the story of a woman at a recent seminar who inherited her mom’s house five years ago, and it’s still sitting there, untouched, because she can’t bring herself to go through everything. Her mom had five sets of patio furniture.
“It meant something to her,” Ethan said. “But nobody really cares about it.”
The house is still there. The stuff is still there. And five years later, the inheritance has become a weight instead of a gift because the plan, if there was one, never thought past ‘give it to her.’
That’s not a legacy. That’s a to-do list.
Questions Worth Asking
Encanto is a movie about feelings. But the feelings it surfaces are ones families carry into attorneys’ offices every year. The episode raised questions worth sitting with:
- Do your kids actually want what you’re planning to leave them, or have you just assumed they do?
- If you have a family farm, a business, or a cherished collection, have you talked to the people who’ll inherit it?
- Is one person in your family controlling everything a deceased spouse set in motion?
- Are your children allowed to say no?
- When did you last update your plan to reflect how your family has actually changed?
These aren’t easy conversations. But they’re a lot easier before the magic candle goes out.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
The questions Encanto raises about inheritance, legacy, and family pressure are ones most families never get around to asking until it’s too late to answer them well.
If you’re ready to make sure your family doesn’t end up with five sets of patio furniture and a house nobody can bear to go through, start with a conversation. Schedule a free consultation with Huizenga Law Firm, and we’ll help you think through what you actually want to leave behind and how to make sure it lands the way you intended.
While you’re here, grab a copy of Ethan’s It’s Not Too Late book series. It’s a practical guide to protecting your family and your legacy, written for regular people, not attorneys.
And if you haven’t yet, subscribe to 82 Toothpicks wherever you get your podcasts. Because every movie is an estate planning movie. Some of them just hide it better than others.