My aunts inheritance choices seem to have destroyed my family

@AfanaIf you think your son deserves to have more, then why not give him your share? If 50k isn’t enough for a house deposit in the Midlands, surely £100k would be?

You need to accept what has happened. It's almost like your daughter has married a very rich man who now gives her a better life than her siblings, but if that happened you'd probably accept it. Look at a positive.

Your DD could have kept every penny of the money, the fact she offered, then offered more is a BIG thing, a lot decency there.

Your Aunt however should have been thoughtful of this. She should have realised that just because of your daughters fortune to have been born female and look nice in pretty frocks she was giving her unfair attention and advantage over her siblings. It sounds like pure favouritism based on factors that your sons couldn't do anything about and I would say yes your Aunt has driven a financial wedge in your family, albeit completely innocently. If your sons are somewhat put out by that I totally understand, inheritance disputes are almost never about the money, its always about the fairness.

However your challenge now is to not take out your Aunt's unfair distribution on your daughter. She got that money and thats done.

Your daughter has been very generous- but yet you all still want more!!

Its up to her how she spends her money - you are all being unreasonable- however difficult it may be for you and the rest of the family.

So to have such a good relationship with your aunt must have taken considerable effort on your DDs part…

I also agree that your aunt was either very naive or not bothered as to to the effect her bequest could have on family dynamics.

You've still not explained what happened yesterday to make your daughter leave.

It isn't right in your opinion.

Personally, I don't think it's right when families tear themselves apart over petty jealousies about money. And I don't think it's right when people have a sense of entitlement about money over which they never had any claim. And I don't think it's right when people are ungrateful for gifts because they believe that they should have been given more.

We all have different moral standards, I guess.

Give it all to OP to distribute as she sees fit. With more to golden balls ds for reasons.

I think the main concern is how much your daughter has already spent, not how much she has kept. She had 1.9 million. She has given away 275k, she has bought a flat in either Kensington or Bayswater for over a million, so let us say 1.3 million, which is a typical price for a one bed in those areas. That means she has probably spent something like 1.55 million and now has £350,000 left.

You say she has cut down on work, has been on lots of holidays and has bought an entirely new wardrobe of clothes. This may be a temporary spending spree and she will now begin to live normally again, but even allowing for the fact her housing costs are now covered for life (although you may find in that part of town that the annual ground rent and service charge cost as much as someone else's mortgage), £350,000 is the kind of sum that you can easily burn through if you don't work much and you spend a lot on holidays and clothes.

I would stop worrying about the jealous cousins and check that your daughter has a good financial advisor and a savings plan.

I think having money early on spoils people’s brains and everyone else that can see it is just jealous lmao.

It might have been nice if your daughter was a little bit more considerate in terms of blatant spending (apart from her property). That is, if was blatant in terms of bragging about it.

Other than that the money was left to her. She's given you all something - which she didn't have to do at all - so, unless you want to lose her entirely you need to get to grips with it.

If you got everything your way going forward how would you like the problem resolved?

Also has everyone else already spent their 50k?

This sh*t is always trotted out on MN. Would you allow an auntie to favourite 1 child out of 3 of your own children? It isn't right. To leave 1 person 1.9 million is ridiculous. What about her own parents? It's odd and I suspect the aunt did it to cause a family fall out. Its cruel.

On the off chance anyone reading likely to be in the Aunt’s situation, do look into leaving at least 10% after disbursements to charity- it raises the inheritance tax threshold and reduces the probate admin.

We’re 14 odd pages in now OP and you don’t seem to have considered a single viewpoint and only reply to comments that allow you to snipe on how you think the aunt did so wrong. So you knew the past 20 years she favourited your DD but what? You didn’t do anything about it? You still expected more money?

Best of luck to you, I hope your mean spirited rant has been worth this ending up on FB and Daily Mail and causing more upset to your poor DD.

I would be insanely jealous of my cousin, I'm not ashamed to admit that.

But towards my own daughter? Never in a million years.

My sister is childless and is leaving her assets split between all her nephews and nieces. She wouldn't dream of doing something like this.

Of course it's the aunts money and she can do as she likes.

But I'm not in the least surprised at the fallout, considering the size of the estate.

Your attitude is awful. I feel sorry for your DD having to put up with such ugly jealousy.

I’m pleased your daughter has enough money to buy herself some lovely friends since it turned out her parents and other family members weren’t much cop

Well it's happened in DH's extended fasmily, and while there were murmurings people were not rude enough to make their feelings known or treat lucky family member differently. Equally though, lucky person didn't go on about their new luxuries in front of their family.

IMO grandparents are different from aunts/uncles. Much like parents should treat their kids equally, so should grandparents (unless, say one person did a lot of the care etc). But not any other relative.

I totally get where you are coming from OP. It can't be nice for the nephews to know how much of a favourite your daughter was. For all those saying how mean you all are, I wonder how they would feel if it happened to them. It sounds like your daughter could have behaved more sensitively too. I hope you manage to find a way through.

What effort did the boys/young men make ? Did they message/email/phone their aunt regularly. Did they send birthday/Christmas cards ? Did they visit occasionally and invite her out for dinner/coffee ?

Maybe you should give your DS the 50K that your DD gave you ?

What did you all say to your DD yesterday that she felt she had to leave ???

Being in the situation wouldn’t change anything tbh. If I were in this situation, and upset about it, that wouldn’t make my viewpoint more valid. It wouldn’t actually make me entitled to money that was never mine to lay claim to, even if I wanted to kid myself that I was.

You, your son, your bother, and your nephews, all need to stop looking at it as them being left out of the will. Your aunt simply decided not to leave her money to family. Instead, she gave it to charity and to the person who meant the most to her. That person could have been a friend or anyone. It just happened to be your daughter. Your daughter was kind to share any of it with others. Shame on you all for making her feel bad.