If you are a second wife, do you expect to inherit everything from your husband?

[rickyrickygrimes]

… or do you expect him to leave something to his children from a previous marriage?

This subject comes up often on here: man is widowed, inherits everything from his wife, remarries, then dies - leaving everything to his second wife and his children inherit nothing.

this happened quite recently to a friend of mine, which not only did not inherit but also lost his livelihood as he was employed in his fathers business, which his second wife chose to sell as she wasn’t interested in running it.

I’m in France where (as I understand it) children cannot be completely disinherited from a will i.e. part of the estate is always reserved for children and the spouse does not inherit everything. This leads to some very complicated situations but does mean that all children will inherit something from their parents, no matter what the relationship between the parents / children is like.

we often hear from the children on here but not often the pov of the second wife. So I’m interested to know what you think? Do you expect to inherit everything from your husband (which is pretty standard between married couples in the UK)? Or would you expect his children from previous relationships to be included / recognised in his will - especially if he has previously inherited from their mother?

A will made under pressure is invalid.

We have gone to some expense to ensure that our estate stays within ‘the bloodline’. This means that if, after we die, and if our DSs marry women with their own kids, everything ultimately goes to our own grandchildren.

I can understand why it makes sense for the second wife to inherit the house- after all, it would be pretty horrible if she lost her home because his children decided they wanted their inheritance.

however, what I’ll never understand is why a wife in that situation wouldn’t then share out the inheritance equally between step kids and own kids. It’s so unfair.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/24/record-number-inheritance-disputes-england-and-wales-wills

Perhaps this is the inevitable outcome.

True and so could I We trust each other enough after 30 good years to believe it won’t happen.

But second wives change their wills sometimes and the kids from first marriage get nothing.

I'm a second wife and my step children are in my will, as well as my own.
The risk is if DH died first, I would be able to change that and remove them. I have no plans to do so but there are no certainties.
I would be very unhappy for our home or joint assets to go directly to children rather than the surviving spouse.
I am very confident I would never remarry.

Yes everything would go to me. It would make no sense to do it otherwise because it's the only way to avoid inheritance tax. Is the tax situation different in France allow the dcs to avoid inheritance tax? Perhaps that is the reason for the different expectations over there?

We have an agreement for me to distribute some of the funds to the dc and step dc and I would honour that (and DH would do the same if I die first). This would not be taxed as it's a gift from a living person (assuming I don't then die within 7 years). But legally everything goes to me and I could certainly choose to keep it all myself and that would be legal.

So this is one way to do it but as someone pointed out on a previous thread, if you die young, it’s v restrictive on the other partner. So for example if Dh died now ( we are mid forties) there are various practical reasons why we would want to move but I wouldn’t be able to because if I sold to buy another property it would trigger the inheritance and I’d have to pay my own kids out and downsize to something costing half as much even through I still need to house them.

My mother was devastated when everything from my grandfather went to his second wife, and then subsequently to her children from her first marriage.

To be clear: it wasn't about the money for my mother, but about personal family letters, photos etc. which all went to her step-siblings, who had nothing to do with her side of the family.

It may have been that he had already given the property to his new wife or (more likely) she was not formally acknowledged as his child in France so there was no record of her there. Something strange going on surely. It sounds as though she was outmanoeuvred by the wife who must have falsified inheritance papers ie declared he had no children for her to inherit everything expecting that she couldn't be traced abroad or be held to account by your sil if she quickly did a bunk. Had your sil been on the spot or more on the ball she could have contacted the Notaire and provided proof of her relationship to her father/birth certificate etc.

I say this as something very similar could have happened to me. For 30+years we heard nothing from my father who had returned to France then suddenly ( having argued with his current wife so wanted to stymie her) he decided to acknowledge my existence which meant that I inherited a share of his property on his death according to French Law. Had he not done that I would have got nothing as I was not acknowledged as existing in French Law and I was anyway ignorant of his whereabouts and his death etc. The estate was handled by the Notaire (according to French Law) who would have acted on information received from his wife.

When my Dad dies he has already told me that everything will go to my Stepmother. He is not well and my stepmother is his carer, we do help but she is there daily.

I am happy with this situation.

A close relative was a second wife and inherited everything but she honoured her husband’s wishes and on her death her will split everything equally to their children and his from his first marriage (she had no children prior to the marriage).

yes, my (now ex) and i agreed if he died it would all come to me in trust for our 2 kids, but i'm also not a bitch, and promised to make sure my step daughter was looked after, with no intention of cutting her out.

Bearing in mind my dsd is an adult in her 30's with a career and already owns her own home she inherited outright from her maternal family line.

not sure about the tax system here in France, though I know it’s common to have to sell properties to pay the inheritance taxes - especially if the estate is left to anyone other than spouse and children.

it is possible to get round this: I have a friend who was widowed quite young with three children. Before her husband died, they got their three children to testify that they rejected their inheritance from their father. This meant my friend could inherit fully from her husband and was in control of the assets - property, money, death benefits, savings and investments - rather than it passing to her young children. Of course this odd ask dinner on the understanding that they will inherit from her in time.

I believe second wives should inherit 50% if there are children involved AND it's been a long standing marriage since the children were little.

If the marriage happened in later years, I think you should only get your % put in. So if dad put in 75% house costs, wife gets 25% back and adult children get 75%.

For this reason, I would never remarry or sell my house to live with a man.

Yes I do. Neither DH or I will have inheritances so there is no family money to pass on, just what we have earnt.

When I die I will share between our children. But if I am widowed at 50 then I might remarry and who knows what might happen? I could have another four husbands…!

We've just drawn up our wills. 1 primary age child between us. We have said that if either of us die our half of the house goes to the child with a life time interest for the remaining parent. All life insurances, pensions etc will be used to settle the mortgage and remaining cash goes to the surviving partner.

That way if the remaining partner remarries the half of the house belonging to the dead partner goes to the child not to any new spouse or children. Also, if remaining partner needs to pay for care home fees the child's part of the house is protected from that.

My Mum & stepdad had mirror wills sharing everything between her 2 children and his two.

After she died he then changed his will leaving most of it to his 2 sons. Bit of a shock to find that out after he’d died as I thought we had a great relationship

Yes you’re right-but we’re now in our sixties and sold our own houses to buy a joint one. If my dh were to die and I didn’t want to stay here, I could sell and buy a little cottage and give his share of the house to his beneficiaries. Same with him. Our children are in their mid twenties now-we put off marrying and living together for years while they were young as it would’ve been too complicated-not just inheritance wise but general life too. I realise that we’re fortunate to be able to do this and it works for us. I came from an extremely poor background, orphaned as a teenager and inherited nothing so am a bit obsessive about protecting my children. I suppose for simplicity, we shouldn’t have married but we love each other very much so this way seems a good compromise. The children know. I’d also recommend to people to leave a list of all their assets/accounts for those left behind so it makes things a bit easier!

You've sort of misunderstood- I was actually meaning that she should not get the family money.

I think that it's reasonable for the second wife to inherit but on her death the remainder of the estate shared between all children, or those that they actually see. Iyswim.

True, but it's unlikely to be proved invalid unless somebody successfully challenged it.

I knew somebody in the UK who forced his dying mum to cut his brother out of her will, and the brother didn't find out until after their mum's death, and he couldn't deal with the situation at that point because he had poor mental health and was sofa-surfing. Disinherited brother sadly ended up killing himself: losing the money had been galling, but the family rift was what really hurt him. (I heard a similar story about a family in France where the rightful heir was done out of their money by a stepmother: he'd moved away and was supposedly untraceable- but it's hearsay and I'm hazy about the details.)

I guess, as with the pp who was illegally deprived of a parent's assets in France, legal rights aren't worth much on either side of the channel if you're not able to enforce them , either because you're out of the country or otherwise vulnerable.

I’m the third wife. Together we have a young
son. My husband has two grown up sons from his previous marriage- both are independent, self-sufficient and do very for themselves. They won’t be inheriting after my husband passes.

They will inherit together with the youngest should both me and my husband pass.

My mum died after over 40 years of happy marriage to my dad. To my (and my siblings) huge surprise he started another relationship within a year of her death despite being in his mid 70s and obviously still grieving for my mum. I don't think they intend to marry or live together but they do spend a lot of time together.

I have such mixed feelings about it all and mostly they are nothing to do with money but it does come into it in more of a symbolic way. I don't financially need any inheritance money from him but if he left it all to his new partner (I don't think he will BTW) I would feel he was erasing my mum and his kids from his life and saying we aren't important. She would have been shocked that he's in a new relationship. It's not something she ever envisioned I am sure. It was completely her assumption that her portion of their shared assets would pass to her children so I think it would be a betrayal of her if that didn't happen.

My BIL's dad did this exact thing. Left all his money to his new wife and nothing to his 2 adult children from his previous very long marriage. There was very little money anyway but he was devastated because he and his kids had kept up a relationship with his dad post divorce, they were not estranged in any way. They sat with him on his deathbed and then to be told he had cut them out, not even a token sum or his watch or anything to remember him by and with no explanation made him re-evaluate whether his dad had ever cared about him at all.

It's not just literally money with inheritance. I don't think people should be written off as greedy or money grabbing if they are upset about being left out.