One child has inherited AGAIN

Not really a will is a straight forward legal document. The op is venting because she feels bad for her older son.

Because ‘the children’ are adults and it’s up to them to choose whether or not they want to share their financial business.

I mean around people not telling their children who received what.

I don’t understand the relevance of your post. OP posted because she’s upset her eldest son isn’t entitled to money from the wider family.

It is shockingly entitled to expect an inheritance. I was a step grandchild who got a token amount from my very wealthy and lovely late step grandfather, for which I was very grateful. I wasn’t expecting anything! I got £5k and the biological grandchildren got circa £500k. I have/had my own biological grandparents.

As a child, I expected not to sit in a room at Christmas with my half siblings and see them being given gifts from their mum (my step mum) and our dad and me being given a lump of coal. I don’t expect to inherit from my step mum when she dies. It doesn’t make us less of a family.

There really isn’t tbh - they’ve been very clear with OP, so none of this should come as any surprise to her. OP has only been asked to allow her adult son to choose for himself whether he wants to share his personal financial info with his brother, which falls under ‘minding your own business and respecting someone else’s privacy’ rather than ‘keeping secrets’.

Doing an advanced search is illuminating - she always seems to be at the centre of some drama with her partner’s mother, her partner’s sister, her partner’s brother’s new girlfriend, her own brother’s wife, her brother’s ex girlfriend, her brother’s ex wife, her ex and his stepchild, her ex’s sibling, her neighbours…

There’s a theme.

A lot of cloak and dagger and secrets in this family. That’s what coming through in this thread.

As much as this is rotten, this can be the consequences of different fathers for your children. I do not say that in a nasty way, but I know someone her little girls dad has money she’s just back from Florida and has a horse etc. Her son who is her daughter’s half brother has never left the country and they just scrape by.

when it’s opened up to different families, different dads etc unfortunately this is the outcome.

Might have been OP publicly kicking off at her daughter’s wedding and trying to wrestle the youngest son out of a family photo that was the breaking point. OP described herself as ‘uncivilized’, so you can bet it was particularly bad.

I suspect she thought that leaving it in a trust to her grandchild, that OP has no way of accessing, was going to be the best way of making sure it went where she intended. She may have thought OP would have worn her DP down, or that she was saving him a fight by going that route.

Sometimes the only way forward is to accept that life isn’t always fair. Not everyone gets (or is entitled to) any inheritance 🤷‍♀️

She didn't agree with her son's choice of future partner and decided to leave her assets and money to her grandchildren. As long as she leaves all assets to her biological grandchildren then legally her children can't say anything. She doesn't have to leave any inheritance to her son's ss and I don't even think he has adopted him.

Had similar. Stepfather, knowing my mother had dementia, arranged new will, passing all to her, then her to all evenly... then the moment she went into care a few months later, changed his, to take back the property, leave nothing for her and distribute all but 10% to his own 3, knowing that my mothers will could no longer be changed. I caveated the Probate and my step/half sibblings saw sense and the house value was distributed evenly as per my mothers will.
Now my mother has passed. I suspect that after distribution in a year or so, I will probably never hear from them again.

That confused me as well but it does work out the older son will inherit half of ops assets alongside his brother and his dad's half of his assets. Ops youngest son will inherit his dad's half plus ops half of her assets. Each child will receive 75% from their biological parents. It looks unfair because that's how the op dressed it up but her ex now owns a property so her older son will inherit.

I'm fucking confused. This is a very tangled web being woven!

Wonder why the DGM was concerned enough about money going to DS1 to write DP out of the will, in that case. Perhaps she thought DP would end up changing his mind.

I understand how she feels for her DS1 and I think instinctively I would be minded to address the vast imbalance by leaving my property interest entirely to him. I would try to explain to both Dc the reason for this in the hope that DS2 would know that it was not a reflection of any greater/lesser love for each of them.
My DF left specific property for 2 of my siblings and none specifically for me (the residue was to be distributed at the executors’ discretion and I may in time benefit, but maybe not).
I never felt any rancour about this as I knew that he believed that I would do well in life but was less sure about the 2 siblings. I would say that he did make the right decision.

It was on another thread. The DP is leaving his share to his only son and the OP is leaving her share to both her sons. She now wants to cut her youngest out of her Will so she can leave it all to her eldest who in time will also inherit half of his own father's property. Her DP is against this plan because he believes she should treat her children equally and that it would be an awful final message to send her youngest child.

Yes I thought the same as you.

You say, "Could it be the father just isn’t prepared to share his worldly goods except with his ‘own blood’? Don’t get together with a mother and child then! I can only imagine how her first son feels."

Could it be that he recognises that his partner's first born son has a biological father, who is responsible for him?

The child did come with the mother but that does not automatically make her partner responsible for her son. Marriage or not. Adoption is an entitely different matter.

Each of their responsibilities are to their own biological children. She is responsible for two. One of which has a shared responsibility with the natural father, and then she shares responsibility with her partner for the younger one.

I'm not sure many biological parents, especially if actively involved in their childrens lives, would appreciate a boyfriend/girlfriend or SP's even, trying to play daddy or mummy to their child(ren). Love, care and respect are really the only things necessary. There should be no expectations on anything else, in my opinion.

I thought DP wanted to leave his assets to the two sons, and the issue is OP wanted them both to leave more to DS1 due to the other bequests? That's how I interpreted 'my partner refused to consider changing our wills leaving more to elder child who was at the time very unlikely to inherit from his own father'. Hence the bit about DGM not having left money to DP in case it went to DS1 ultimately. I may be wrong. There's a lot going on here!

Is your view because of the 'As it stands he will inherit half of my property and half of his dad’s' sentence?

Different information keeps coming up from different threads which I am unfamiliar with. According to this thread…DP does not agree their wills (hers and his) should reflect the fact their younger son has ample inheritances from his father’s family, also he intends to leave the whole of his share of their property (half) to the younger son. She is concerned about the disparity of resources that will be available to her two sons, and DP apparently has no such concern. They have been a family unit of four, for twenty years. A long time to have an inferior position in his own home, for the elder boy.

The DP here does actually appear to buy into this view, as he wants to leave the same amount of money to both sons. That's a pretty significant sign that he's 'embraced' DSS, albeit I take your point that we don't know why they're not married.

OPs problem is that other people she and DP don't control have declined to give anyone other than DS2 their money. There's not a lot he can do about that. The seismic ructions she describes after the first inheritance evidently haven't inspired family members to do anything differently.

*lose out

The mother was, and is, the one responsible for her child. The onus was on her to not continue a relationship with/have a child with her partner if neither he nor his family were willing to offer what she wanted. So yes, it’s her fault for expecting something from them that weren’t going to provide. Her partner and his family were not responsible for him, she was.*

Married or not, stepparent isn’t a legal title, and it doesn’t reflect a legal relationship.

OP has been fighting a battle she’s never going to win for two decades. It’s not even for her son, as he’s straight up told her that her approach only hurt him. They ‘should’ have done X, Y, and Z? Well tough shit, they didn’t. OP chose to remain 🤷🏻‍♀️

*and it’s hardly like she actually thinks that stepparents should ‘step up’ for their stepchildren - she was vehemently opposed to her ex adopting his own stepchild lest her son lost out on any inheritance.

Absolutely! Everyone seems to think in a family unit (a ‘household’ to use official parlance, whether they’re married or not, of twenty years duration, in which the mother and her first son are very much an item (!)…and IF married, he would be called her partner’s stepson, though if not, he’s still his de facto stepson…half brother to his sibling)…it’s all fine and dandy for him to be treated as an outsider and interloper in his own home. His mother is fighting for his interests. It’s not just financial. He’s the older brother and should be embraced by her partner. They brought him up together? If not, if the partner isn’t there for him…I still can’t fathom why she got together with him at all. And if they aren’t married, (which would ‘legitimise’ this whole thing it seems)…why not? Is that HER fault as everyone seems quick to imply? Could it be the father just isn’t prepared to share his worldly goods except with his ‘own blood’? Don’t get together with a mother and child then! I can only imagine how her first son feels.

That sounds very different from this situation.

it sounds almost Dickensian. I assume in your example the brothers didn’t grow up in the same household if only one lived in poverty? Same dad, different mothers?

in this example one boy has simply inherited some money from family members not shared with his older half brother.

Haven't read the whole thread but I know two half brothers with wildly different lives. One loved by both parents, stable, affluent family, good schools. The other, abandoned, rejected by his father, grew up in poverty, went to shit schools.

It's horrible to witness