AIBU to keep inheritance separate from our family finances?

There’s no right or wrong answer to this and of course the money has a lot of emotion attached to it. It’s just something to talk about with your husband.

For what it’s worth when my husband inherited about £10K from his grandmother we used it to pay off my school loans. But I was pregnant, we’d been together for a decade and share all finances so he was really paying the interest too.

If I came into the money before marriage then it would stay separate but to me anything after marriage should be shared. Especially in a long standing marriage.

my mom died in January I will soon be getting approx 30k as inheritance. I have decided I want the front garden sorting out and a new drive laid then if there is money left over I want some work doing on the back garden. Husband has told me I should spend it on myself but a new front garden would actually make me very happy and my mom would really approve of it.

so I suppose in my case I am making the decision what to do with it but it will be to improve the family environment.

"dear god" the good fortune is the cash coming in.

Not the dead parents - some of us have dead parents and no money coming in

If you got an extra few thousand in inheritance surely you would think there is a bright lining in your cloud

We have all our money in one pot, but when I received an inheritance, we ringfenced the money. We wanted to use it for non budgeted expenses eg an additional holiday, gifts for the DCs etc. We decide jointly how to spend the money and also take into consideration what my Dm would have done with the money eg we will use some to pay for DD’s driving lessons as my dm paid for Ds’s . It’s not in a separate account in my name, it’s just theoretically put to one side.

I inherited some money it went on our extention. DH inherited some money and used it to pay off a big chunk of the mortgage. Any further inheritances would be home improvements or holidays plus helping the kids.

I don't like the concept of "family money". Every person, married or not, has a right to personal funds, and to keep money that's specifically been given to them for just themselves.

If we got divorced (probably unlikely as we've been together 30 years but never say never) I would have no intention of touching that money, it belongs to him.

Ultimately though I have a £50K Premium Bond plus £20K per year ISA allowance so seems daft for DH to pay 40% tax on interest when we could squirrel away £140K between us in year one then drip feed £40K into ISA's each year after that.

Not a typical MN response btw, a financially savvy one 🙄.

I think it’s not so much a male/ female thing but a surrounding circumstances thing, as I’ve tried to say in my post.

It depends on whether the spouse is just earning slightly less or if they’ve made financial sacrifices for the family as a whole, imo.

I think it depends on loads of factors. It needs a conversation at the very least, I would say. And it’s worth remembering it would likely be considered a marital asset if you did divorce (but also depending on various things I think).

Off the top of my head, whether the money is needed elsewhere, what your finances look like day to day, whether your partner has access to other money for themselves, in what circumstances are you the breadwinner- do you mean you just happen to earn a bit more than they do but you’ve both always worked and share household tasks etc, or is your partner at home looking after young kids? If the latter, there’s more argument that it should be shared I think.

I'm all for nobody relying on a spouse for financial support. However - if this were a man posting, he'd be told it's joint money!

Plenty of people's parents die without leaving them an inheritance. This is about the money, not the OP losing her parents.

The fact that the OP is asking the question suggests that she's trying to right a perceived inequality in her marriage, either that her DH doesn't pull his weight financially/working or in the home, or that he takes a disproportionate fraction of family money for himself. Otherwise the OP wouldn't feel like she needed to hang onto this money for her/DCs. So maybe that's what needs looking at?

we’ve received 4 inheritances, some smaller ones went right into household spending, some special purchases and yes some into a savings not to be frittered away.
save it if that’s what you’re head and heart are saying at this time.

Personally I think inheritance belongs to the person and not the household.

In saying that though DH received a large inheritance that we have split between us to maximise tax free savings via ISA's and Premium Bonds but ultimately it's his money not mine.

With DH and I we've put all inheritances into the family pot along with any other money (though sometimes it's spread in different accounts and separate names, we see it as one pot though). That has suited me as I'm a much lower earner than DH.

What would your husband do if the boot was on the other foot?

Give over. My parents died recently too. I haven’t kept all the money to myself. We’re a family.

We have decided to keep inheritances separate from family money.

In general (at least in England) if you ever divorce then if an inheritance has been mixed in with family money it is just part of the overall pot of money and it will be shared.

If you’ve always kept it separate then you can just keep it

(obviously there are complications to this, and in some circs you’d have to share it, but this is the starting point).

My feeling was that ultimately if we did divorce my grandparents wouldn’t have wanted their life savings ending up with my ex husband! So I kept it separate, he’s now also had an inheritance which he’s kept separate.

It depends so much on the relationship. I've been married over 30 years, we have our kids together, we've built everything together. Everything we inherit would go into a joint pot. I don't think that's unreasonable in the circumstances.

If my DH died and I remarried in however many years, it would be entirely different. Then I'd want to protect my assets, which we hadn't built together and where we didn't have a joint stake in the children, so it would benefit my children. I would keep all assets and inheritances completely separate in this case, for my children's sake.

Invest it. Regardless of whether you consider if just yours or family money, invest it and forget about it.

You know what she meant. A sudden influx of money (yes in sad times but still extra money)

If you are the type of family that choose to put it all in a family pot (I am) then you really cant just decide when it doesnt suit you.

I got over 6 figures last year and i dont think for a second i imagined it as anything other than family money. I havent spent a single penny of it on myself and neither has my partner but if we did, it would be the same as any other money we spend. A family decision.