To think the only fair way to leave your money is equally

Bloody hell, it was your choice to have kids! Pure greed.

Not necessarily, unless you can leave 10’s of millions for whole life care. Otherwise leaving money will affect benefits, and once the money runs out you’re back to square one again , potentially reclaiming benefits and possibly changing care homes or whatever has been set up with inherited money.
We are in this position and have left some money in trust for siblings to administrate for her, but otherwise haven’t split equally as it just wouldn’t benefit our disabled daughter. With a trust the siblings will have some money for her but not the full inheritance, this makes us feel sad but the whole situation is sad to be honest.
Normally i think inheritances should be equal

MIL has left her money to be shared among her grandchildren. I am surprised about how upset DH is about this - particularly as we have 2 children and his brother has 1, so as a family we are getting "more". However he sees it as his mother showing her (lack of) affection about him; it's not really to do with the money.

@harmfulsweeties we are pretty much in that scenario - although we have a mortgage and can afford our bills/food/some extra curricular activities for our children, we don't have much left after that and rarely go on holiday/out to eat. My brother is married to a multimillionaire- their kids go to the most expensive private schools, they go on holiday 8 or so times a year and always having amazing experiences. My parents will (rightfully in my opinion) leave everything shared equally and have always treated us equally.

I think inheritance chat brings out the worst in some people!

One of my siblings has had a much less fortunate life than the rest of us, and I suspect will receive the bulk of my mum's (not inconsiderable) estate when the time comes. I have no expectations, and would have no issue with this.

Sure there might be a lottery win or billionaire partner in the future, but statistically that is far less likely than life continuing on a similar trajectory, and surely all parents want their children to be comfortable and happy

I have two DC. The youngest vanished over 4yrs ago and cut off the whole family including their sibling. We don't even know where they live.

I've re-written my will so they only get 10% with 90% to my eldest. If they want nothing to do with us, why would they want any inheritance?

I think the main thing is to communicate. It seems to me that the big issue with differing inheritances is that they so often come as a surprise.

I agree that equal should be the starting point. There are cases though where being “equal” really isn’t fair. If one child is severely disabled and cannot care for themselves, it would be churlish to deny the parents the right to leave them enough money to be cared for. I have no idea what my family member’s will states, but they’ve given one brother a house, a large plot of land, and funded lots of training for him to set up a successful business, the other brother hasn’t had any of that - so if they have split the inheritance equally I expect that’ll go down badly.

DPs have said their estate, once both pass, is to be shared equally between the DCs. There will be more cash to some, as there will be property to others, but the value should be similar (ish). And DM has a list of specific items of jewellery that she wants split certain ways between DDs, DDILs and DGDs. But I have no doubt there will be plenty that gets argued about. And plenty of upset about the real value of some items and perceptions of favouritism (if anything - they are trying to look after those most in need to the detriment of others in their attempts at fairness, as not all items are the same value in reality).

I guess it depends on the individual family and the amount left, my husbands great grandma died two years ago, she left her house to him and her money to his little brother, fairly equal amounts if we look at what the house could be sold for.

We aren’t sure about ours at the moment, as it stands we’ve set up a trust so if we both die both children are looked after and their uncle is able to access funds to raise them. Once they’re adults it depends on their situation, our daughter has cerebal palsy, she’s only two, so at the moment we don’t know if she’ll be independent or not, she may require care, assisted living etc. If she does it is likely we would leave her a larger share to ensure her standard of living doesn’t decrease if we aren’t there to help fund it etc. If she is able to be independent, it would be shared equally. If either of them decide to have children one family may technically get more if their children inherit from us. Again, if one had a child with additional needs we may decide that actually they do require more help so may leave that child with a larger share to help pay for care needs etc.

I agree 100 percent to leaving money equally between DC. The only exception is if one DC is severely disabled and then I'd set aside some of their share of money to go into a trust to help provide for them once I'd gone with the rest being split equally between the DC.

When my DH's grandma died she split her money evenly between her grandkids. My DH earned much more than the others so redistributed his share to everyone else.
My mother left her estate evenly between me and my siblings. One has disabled child. My other sister (childless) has told me she will leave all her assets to this child. Seems totally fair to me. I will be leaving my estate evenly between my kids.

Any justification as to which child will benefit most is based on a snapshot in time. A better off sibling might lose everything due to illness or disability. A poorer child might end up marrying a millionaire or winning the lottery.

Well in an ideal world yes but obviously it has to depend on the individual circumstances. If one child is disabled and will never have the opportunities that the other does for example.

One size can't fit all.

Our brother is getting the family home (in London so worth a lot) because he didn’t move out and boys are mollycoddled in our family.

I’m resigned to it and still provide care to parent.

DH is NC with his dad and will refuse to accept any inheritance.

So in our case we have no expectation of an inheritance from either side. We also did not get any parental help with house deposit etc so have never had any expectation.

Quite simple - equal to each child. Up to them if they want to help their own kids before they themselves inherit.

In a lot of these cases where there is some elaborate unequal split I'd hazard a guess that plenty of the wealth being controlled to the nth degree was, itself, inherited in the first place!

It’s theirs to leave however they want.

A dear friend of mine has an emotionally abusive brother. Her mother tried so hard for years to appease him and to include him in eg family celebrations but he finally went too far and she felt she had to cease contact with him. She has written him out of her will (as far as Scottish law allows) and hasn't told him.

He is going to go BALLISTIC when she dies and he realises what she's done. I'm certain that he will take this out entirely on my friend but ultimately it is his own vile actions that have got him to where he is now. And his grasping, treacherous wife.

I mean can you not all - you, dsis and your dad not just sit down and talk about it?
I can see why your dad might want to try and balance the scales for his grandchildren.

Unfortunately not everyone sees it like that... You read about so many arguments over money when parents die.

Disinheritance is very common. I broadly agree default should be equal though which the vast majority of people do..

That said sometimes one child is massively successful and the other isn’t and decent parents tie themselves in knots over it as the successful child is often still helpful and kind and parent doesn’t want to upset them but for the poorer sibling the inheritance life changing.

Part of the problem is that what seems equal is different to different people, as evidenced by the question of what to do about grandchildren. I think as fair as possible and make sure you have discussed it so no one gets a shock and they all have a chance to talk about why they feel it's unfair if they do.

My bro and SIL really struggle with money whereas dh and I don't. If my parents explained they wanted to leave it all to db for this reason, how could I be hurt? Of course I'd understand. But like you op, my preference would be for them to enjoy every penny themselves.

If I end up with grandchildren one day I would like to leave a modest amount to each of them, and then divide whatever is left equally between my children. Something like 10% split equally between grandchildren, and my two children get 45% each. Or maybe 20/40/40. Depends - that is all a long way off!

In theory, of course split equally is the ideal. In practice, maybe the parents have helped children at different points and due to the different ages of children, it’s unequal amounts. Child 1 buys at 27 as they met their partner at uni, they buy with a 10% deposit and parents gift £17,000. Child 2 doesn’t meet a partner young and ends up buying by themselves at 37, they are only 3 years younger than their older sibling but in the 13 years since their older sibling bought, their 10% deposit is now £29,000. Child 2’s 10% deposit is £12,000 higher than child 1’s but both are given 10%. Should that £12,000 be taken out of the estate on the parent’s death, even though Child 1 has had the benefit of building wealth as a couple for a much longer time?

Life happens and life is unpredictable and unfair. Parents want to help their children when they need it, sometimes through positive things like buying a house or helping with university costs and sometimes through negative things like divorce or redundancy. That’s before you get into anything more complicated like disabilities, addiction, debt management, death of a child’s partner.

I think people often try to make their will fair and split it evenly but there is often feelings in life that are magnified on death. So does the child who quit their job, their marriage suffered to look after their parent feel it’s fair that the will is split evenly with their sibling who carried on working and whose marriage didn’t fail? Probably not. From the parents point of view, they don’t want to blame the child that didn’t look after them and leave them with the feeling of being unloved by their parent because we equate money with love.

Your Will is your last chance to tell people what they mean to you. It has nothing to do with whatever wealth they’ve managed to acquire themselves, it’s about what value you place on them. It’s cruel to favour one over another under those circumstances.