Different Dads Different Prospects

I am not wanting my eldest to directly inherit from my in-laws but indirectly through my husband.

And this is precisely why the grandparents are giving directly to their grandson. They don't want to risk anything they have going to your eldest indirectly via their son. They've done him a favour by not putting him in a position where he has to give something to his bio son but not to his stepson.

The message is loud and clear: they're fond of this lad, treated him well over the years etc, but he's not a member of their family because they don't see him a child of their child's.

My parents did it slightly differently with one of their DC. They didn't want to deliberately exclude step-grandchildren...so they just gave less to the DC who is the step-parent of these children. They left that DC an equal amount to all their other DC, knowing full well that that money may filter down to said step-grandchildren; but that DC didn't get anything in addition "for" his step-DC whereas the rest of us did for our bio DC. So whereas we got (say) $100 each + $100 for each of our children, my sibling only got $100 and $0 for each of his step-children. Up to him what he does with his $100, we can none of us take it with us after all.

The issue with OP changing her will is that right now her eldest is included in his will, but he can very easily change that and only leave to his son if OP changes hers to favor her eldest.

If she changes her will her son won’t end up receiving more than the 50% he’s already in line for, and actually she risks him ending up with less. Any inheritance her husband receives from his parents won’t automatically become marital property, and he may decide to keep it separate in order to leave it in its entirety to his son.

Ah I see, thanks. Couldn't follow the logic.

Well, IMO the GPs are completely entitled to give away their wealth like this and avoid IHT, makes total sense to set up their DGCs.

She means

She wants the grandparents to only give cash to their kids.

So her DH will have a bigger estate to gift to her kid.

She doesn't want them giving anything to grandkids - this means her DH will inherit less from them. And less will go to her eldest.

Hugely different. The OPs eldest son has two parents in his life and presumably his father’s extended family too.

The OPs husbands parents don’t need to take on the eldest child as their own Grandchild because the child already has two sets of biological grandparents.

The eldest does see his father. OP updated us with that nugget of info a little later on in the thread.

Some families are just like this.

I met my dh when my son was 8. His parents treated ds the same as his sisters children (then aged 2 and 6), from the day they met ds.

When dh and I married two years later, they changed thier wills to include my ds along with thier other two grandchildren. They set up a savings account for him and put in the same amount each month as the others.

My ds is 23 now and they paid for his driving lessons, just as they had planned to for the other grandchildren.

Ds has never been treated any differently. Me and dh have two children together now, and there is zero difference to how PIL treat them to Ds. They call him their grandson to people they meet, he calls them nan and grandad.

I am extremely lucky and very grateful to them, especially as ds has had awful experiences with his paternal grandparents (they hated me so take it out on ds).

It’s not true that there is always a disparity. Some people are genuinely lovely, like my PIL. I have learned so much from them.

(And of course, in dh will, my ds is equal to the two children we have together. He wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving ds out).

I haven’t read the whole thread @DelaneyDonkey so sorry if I am just repeating what everyone has said before.

Your PILs are not blood relations to your eldest DS and the reality is if they have given property to their other grandkids then their choices are to give property to your youngest son (their grandson), creating disparity between your children, or not to give him property and create disparity between their grandchildren. They see the first as unfair in your eyes, the second as unfair in their eyes. If this had been a matter of a few hundred pounds they may have included your eldest son in their generosity, but it is not reasonable to expect them to give him an entire property possibly worth six figures. It creates a problem for you, but it is really not your PILs at fault.

Turning to your DH, the property creates disparity between his son and his step-son and, as it is a gift from his parents, my personal view is that it is his family (in a sense part of his potential inheritance) that is causing the issue. I would see it as completely reasonable to want to redress this imbalance himself (with you) by gifting your eldest son with what you can afford, ideally now but if this is not possible then through your wills. Maybe not a property, but the deposit for a property. If he doesn’t want to do this this says a lot about how he views your eldest son, which you may already know and may or may not understand. He is not his biological father.

Irrespective of your husband’s views OP, you may want to do what you can out of your own money without touching your joint assets. Your ability to do this may be limited, but in years to come your eldest son may appreciate any effort that you did make.

It is up to your PILs how they gift their assets and it is up to you how you gift yours. Your children are no longer equal because one has had a property gifted to him and one hasn’t. There is no problem with you treating them differently in order to address this imbalance. If one of your sons had a disability nobody would disagree with you giving that one more money to make their lives more equal. This is not so different.

But whatever you do plan to do it is important that you are open with both of your sons so they understand, to limit resentment later, or if there is resentment to ensure it is against you and you can talk about it, and not against each other.

And of course in the event your ex’s family come through for your eldest son, the same applies for the youngest.

Good luck OP. Blended families are beautiful and challenging in turns.

OP, it's probable that you and DS1 have had a better life than if you hadn't met DH and his family, there have been advantages to your son, it just depends what you compare. The fact DH is going 50:50 for inheritance to the boys is already generous.

So I think you should not change your wills, however, I think it would make sense for you to have life insurance that pays out to DS1. This can be different than inheritance as it's to recognise that if anything happened to you, he'd be much more "on his own," than DS2 with his generous extended family.

Hopefully DS1 will find a path soon, do everything you can to get him going, the resentment won't grow if he's secure and happy.

But OP doesn't want PIL to give her elder son a house/money, she wants her DH to. And she's also said that she and DH currently have mirror wills giving the two boys 50% each. Her DH will presumably inherit some wealth from PIL and her elder son will get 50% of whatever is left of this. So I can only assume OP means she wants her DH to change his will to leave more than 50% of his estate to her elder son, who isn't his biological son and as far as we know hasn't been adopted by him or had parental responsibility for him given to DH. And who also has a father and GP.

She can choose to give her elder son more of her estate if she wants to, in her own will. But surely it's unreasonable to expect her DH to?

PS - depending on region could be only £100k value/£500pcm. But yes inequality

I come from a family where I play the part of your oldest son. I realised that when my stepdad passed, that actually I wasn’t in line to inherit anything but my 3 half brothers were. I grew up with my stepdad believing he and his family were my biological family, so slightly different in treatment but I didn’t inherit anything. I don’t envy my brothers, I just realise that life isn’t fair.

This.

Depends how you see things.

My cousins had everything handed to them. None of them had careers.

My siblings had nothing. We all have careers, brought our own houses and cars - 2 have paid off mortgages.

Life is why you put into it - If be worried about a child given too much too soon,

We help our children, we could afford more - but I want them to work hard and appreciate what they can afford themselves.

Your oldest floundering and the grandparent support are completely separate issues.

Your oldest needs to make a real plan if he is not going to university. He can’t just depend on random jobs. He will never earn a living wage and he is experiencing the instability that comes with that life path.

I mentioned earlier my dds being slighted at times by step mum/dad’s family. But along side that they also recognise that my dh raised them, provided for them and they wouldn’t have had the life they have had without him.

You are being massively unreasonable.

It's their money and they want to leave it to their blood relatives.

They obviously feel they have set up their kids in life and want to help their grandkids.

They allowed to this.

They are allowed to give cash to their grandkids.

You need to think about how you can support your eldest with coming to terms with this, and get his life back on track.

Because at the moment it seems you're just making excuses for why things haven't worked out for him.

It seems like you giving him an excuse to fail. If you don't address this it will become a huge chip on his shoulder. And he may even blame this for how his life turns out.

You and your eldest need to cultivate gratitude. Your eldest has a lot of things in his favour and if he allows the fact that his brother has more financially to embitter him, he could ruin a perfectly decent life

Then tough luck. You remarry, you take the way things fall.

I find it galling OP is put out about this. She should have made provisions for her own child. Nobody should expect others to include their child in a will.

Crazy thinking.

Is the issue also that by bypassing your DH, as well as expertly making sure you don’t pass on to elder DS, they’ve also cut you and DH out? Had you been expecting to inherit?

You sound so incredibly entitled! Why should your DH’s parents fund a child who already has two parents of his own?

It’s the curse of blended families
This!
My current in laws have no interest in my children from my first marriage, I am unsurprised by this.
I thank my lucky stars that I declined to have children with their son.

It doesn’t sound like they’re giving him free rein tbh. They’ve clearly carefully managed their money, and OP has said that her youngest will be taught how to manage this property.

I suspect they have been and are working with financial management services, and have put measures in place to make sure that he won’t just blow through it, but benefit from it long term. As part of this I also think it’s highly likely that the youngest has been receiving an education in how to manage his finances wisely and to not just rely on what they are giving him (hence his job). OP may not have been aware of this, of course.

It must be really hard to see your boys with different levels of advantage because of course you love them equally and want the same for them. But the fact is that they have different fathers and different grandparents, and that will affect them in all kinds of ways. As your youngest grows up, look out for ways that you can support him in whatever he wants to do.

I stand by my previous posts, but as you have direct contact with the father of eldest and he does see his father you need to be on his case as well.

You say your eldest's father didn't want contact, but what about his parents? Did you keep up a relationship with them, or did they not want to know either? Developing a relationship with his own grandparents might help him understand his roots rather than feeling like a second class grandchild.