Giving grandchildren different amounts of inheritance

I think it would be fine to skip a generation and split evenly between grandchildren. I think his suggestion is pretty outrageous. If I was her I would point out that skipping a generation already favours his children

Whenever someone makes helpful suggestions on how an inheritance should be split, I would only ever listen to them if the suggestion was not to their (or their dcs) benefit.

Either 50% to the son and late daughter’s family or skip a generation and 33% to each dgc. Either way is fair.

Tell the son it is the only fair way, his niece may already (very sadly) have had an inheritance, but his dc will also inherent from him in the future.

I agree with this post 100%

I don't know the wider family circumstances, how the grand daughter will take it etc which should also add to her consideration.

If the amount being inherited was around £100k then I would say an unequal split was the right thing to do as it allowed for 2 deposits only. Since the amount being inherited is so high it more than allows for 2 deposits and then something else.

I think your friend should talk to the granddaughter about what she would like to use the inheritance for - education, investment property, money to give her extra time not working when she has children etc. It is a lot of money to inherit at such a young age, especially after losing her Mum.

My rule of thumb is to never ever give uneven amounts in one's will. I have seen fallings out on both sides of my family over this, along with my DH family. The deceased probably thought they were being fair but the impact on the living can be lifelong. Please urge your friend to reconsider, and not listen to her son.

50% to son 50% to granddaughter

My grandfather died when I was a young teen and my mother died about the same time as my grandmother when I was an older teen (and my mother had terminal cancer so it was clear that she only had months to live). My grandmother's estate was split 50/25/25 between my aunt, my brother and I (i.e. my brother split my mother's 50%). Neither my aunt nor her children have ever suggested it shouldn't have been this way.

I would recommend splitting it as if both her children had survived, so 50% to granddaughter and 50% to son’s children. This is what a good solicitor will initially advise and then go on to tailor to individual needs.

I would imagine her current Will probably leaves 50% to granddaughter and 50% to son and that’s why he’s trying to get her to change it so his kids get more. Money makes people terribly greedy. Son’s kids will obviously inherit from him and he must be doing okay if he doesn’t want to inherit from his mother.

Remember her granddaughter is only wealthy because she lost her mother at a young age and financial circumstances can change at any time. This is why equal is generally best as even someone who is wealthy can lose that wealth if something bad happens.

Absolutely equal split between each grandchild.

Sons kids have the benefit of living parents...

This is awful. Your friend’s poor granddaughter. It should be an even split or half to your friend’s granddaughter and half to her son. No way should her gd miss out on her rightful share.

Argh. Sorry for the typos.

Her son sounds awful. If I was her, I’d speak to him and express my disgust. What a bastard.

I’d give granddaughter half and sons children 25% each. That way she’s given to her children equally.

Looking back to those times, I’ve remembered how upset we both were. I cried and cried over how bleak everything was with my MIL. She was very difficult and we had to cope alone. My DH wasn’t in the best of health himself and I was recovering from ovarian cancer.

There’s so much more to his story, including the nieces having very little to do with their grandmother. When she became mentally unwell, they weren’t in the least bit interested. It was left to me and DH to cope. It was a very difficult time. It felt very much like they were money grabbing. When she died we were left to clear her bungalow. She was a hoarder, we filled three skips and the local charity shops couldn’t take any more stuff. Not once did either niece offer to help. Sorry to drip feed.

This would still be say £100,000 if not a little more to the cousin who owns property already, but it would also give his 2 children the opportunity to buy a better property. They all live in the London/SE area so housing is expensive!

It's not the grandmother's responsibility to see that her son's children have enough money to buy property in one of the most expensive real estate markets out there!

There is something so distasteful about treating the death of a family member like a lottery win.

Equal split, anything else would be unfair to her deceased daughter's child.

Having been on the end of “unequal” inheritance it was the most polarising experience and would not recommend it. There are still family members barely talking.

Eithrr 50-50 to each child (so 25-25-50 to grandchildren) but if genuinely skipping a generation then I could see splitting it into thirds for the grandchildren as okay.

My parents are currently deciding whether to do separate inheritance for the grandchildren (mine and my siblings children). One of my siblings has 4 children and is always skint but seem to get bailed out. My parents subsidised their rent for a long time and now the other side are doing the same so IL can be a SAHP. I told my parents it’s their money not my inheritance if they want to leave a portion to each grandchild but it still bugs me a bit because it feels like my sibling repeatedly gets bailed out and rewarded for being fiscally irresponsible.

In the same vein why should the granddaughter be “punished” because her mum died.

When my grandmother died she left a third to each of her children. As my mum predeceased her we received her third. My uncle suggested that we divide our third between her seven grandchildren.
My younger sister pointed out that her unexpected pot of savings was the result of my DF gifting my grandmother my DMs pension. He had asked if we were happy for him to do this and we had no objections. I had actually forgotten he’d done this and since he also predeceased her the payments stopped on his death.
My uncle soon dropped the suggestion since most of my grandmothers savings were actually our inheritance. We were not interested in claiming them.
I think because we had inherited my DPs estate they thought that we were ok for money.
it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
Had my DM still been alive there is no way she would have suggested it, we pointed this out. We also suggested that it would be perfectly ok for them to pass on money to their children if they wanted to. Also that their children would inherit when they too died.
I think the idea came from the DW of one of my cousins. It later transpired that she had got into a bit of a financial mess through gambling and thought that grandma’s inheritance would pay off their debts.

As a result we have made our will so if our DS predeceased us our estate goes to my two nieces. DH’s DM has been underhand with her estate (long story) so DH does not want anything going to his family. Most of our money has come from either my business or inheritance from my DPs so we feel that it should go to my family.

Inheritance really does bring out the worst in people. Fortunately my DS is an only so he will have no problems, hopefully.

Even when my DM died, my aunt ( DM’s SIL) pestered my sister for items of her jewellery that she had apparently promised to my cousins. My DSis was in charge of her jewellery and conveniently lost the key to her jewellery box.

@Wiunthoopered I don't think your DH comes out of that story well. At all.

Just imagine somebody actually having the thought enter their head - let alone acting on it and taking advantage in their own family's favour - that a very young adult between 18-22 is 'already very lucky' for having lost her mother and thus needs to lose some of her 'privilege'.

He is an absolute turd.

It's interesting how the people who suggest skipping a generation and splitting it equally between the grandchildren very frequently 'just happen' to have more children themselves than their siblings do...

So under the 'normal' course of things, the GD would get her late mother's half and the son would get his half. Of course, he's perfectly at liberty to ask for his half to be passed straight on to his own sons - in a way, this would level out the field, as all of the heirs would be of the same generation.

However, it sounds like he's already engineered it as a given that his sons will get an extra third of their cousin's money - but he still thinks this is unfair.

The house is worth £1.2m - whether his sons get their fair 50% (whether now or when their father dies) or whether they insist on taking a third of their cousin's inheritance too, they will each either get £300K or £400K, which are both huge sums of money - but this is somehow not enough to help them get on and be debt-free, so they 'need' £540K each?

If he's including the money and resulting financial opportunities in life that his sister left to her daughter as part of the whole 'reckoning' of who has and who should have what when they need it, does that mean that he's planning on leaving the majority of his money to his niece when he goes, to make it all properly equal again and avoid capitalising on his sister's tragic early death - considering that his sons have already had the bulk of theirs to set them up in life from their GM? No need to answer that one; I think I can guess...

What a truly nasty man, seeking to rob his own niece of most of her inheritance by taking advantage of her losing her mother tragically young. It's not even like his sons won't already be left in an extremely privileged financial position from their GM's will - he's just wanting to get them even more for no reason other than that he thinks he can.

What a dickhead. Don’t skip a generation -
50% to the DGD as a proxy for her mother and the other 50% to the uncle.

My friend’s DF died when she was very young and basically all of her DGM’s estate (having outlived her son) then went to her aunt, the surviving child (friend was left some personal belongings). It was only in adulthood that it dawned on my friend who wrong this was and it’s impacted on her view of her aunt (who was an adult at the time of inheritance).

Either 50% to the son and 50% to the granddaughter (her mother's share of inheritance),
or an equal three-way split between the three grandchildren.

The solo granddaughter may well have a lovely big house in London but her mother is dead and that's devastating at such a young age. She shouldn't be penalised for losing a parent.

Everyone in this situation is going to be financially blessed if sharing a 1million property inheritance.

Your friend should do whatever she feels is right in her own mind, then make it clear that it's not up for further discussion so that she can try to relax a little in whatever time she has left.

Keep it equal.

I would do a fair split between the 3. The other two will presumably get an inheritance from their father when he eventually passes just as the daughter did when her mum passed so there's nothing to say they couldn't be in a better position in the long run.

The only caveat to that for me would be if one of the 3 grandchildren did significantly more for her in terms of care etc. Otherwise a 3 way split is fair.

Those are special circumstances that don't apply in this case. And the go seems to have a food relationship with them all so that's not a factor either.