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?

The point is that upon remarrying, his existing will becomes invalid. He's a lovely man but not very organised. If he simply forgot to make a new will then his new wife would inherit everything.

And unfortunately, as this thread has shown, things go wrong. It happened to my own best friend. Her lovely dad couldn't cope as a widower and quickly remarried a seemingly lovely but actually not at nice lady who manipulated him into changing his will in her favour. Everything my friend's lovely mum worked so hard for with her dad was left to the second wife's children.

@ThisIsOk

Could sell and if wanting smaller house worth less the rest could.be invested ie into a property to rent out. Surviving spouse would get rent for lifetime then split as per each will. Alternatively the money could be added to trust if children under age (we already have the life insurance set up to go into trust untill 25. But accessible before 25 via trusties if needed) or if older then money would be split at the time according to will.

Ie unless I needed the rental money I would allow part inheritance at this stage.

You have to consider every eventuality. We trust each other to follow each other wishes but if new partners enter the scene after first death you never know what will happen this way we have both ensured that our children are safeguarded

You can't control your money from beyond the grave. Two members within our family. Both men remarried one in his 70s. To a young woman, he died two years later she inherited everything his children forgotten.

Another a widower bought a place abroad to live in. He met a 25 year old fell in love. They lived the high life. He was mid 50s. He died suddenly alone body wasn't found for a while. Everything of any value vanished as did the girlfriend.

Write and adjust wills as needed.

A bit of both.
I wouldn’t leave the house to the dcs for example. I feel it’s only right for dh to carry on living in our house.
But some savings, esp as some are coming from inheritance on my side, then yes that’s going to the dcs.

Both sound like arseholes

When my dad died he left everything to his 2nd wife. I'd like to think I'm included in her will but I guess I won't know for sure until the time comes. I love my step-mum and don't begrudge her anything that she inherited from my dad. Not sure how I'll feel if nothing comes to me...

@TwigTheWonderKid

Leave your share to your sons then, but make it clear to them what your wishes and expectations are (in a letter if they are not old enough to fully understand)

@TwigTheWonderKid so sorry to hear you’re in this situation 💗
DH is just trusting me not to go against his express written wishes, which I would never do. If I remarried I would ensure his wishes were legally protected.

I don't entirely agree. I think most people want their assets to go to those they love, and those they feel they have a responsibility to support. The problems seem to arise when adult children can't understand that this naturally includes the current spouse. Particularly when they can't or won't realise that someone's desire to prioritise an elderly widow/widower's needs might be stronger than their desire to support their adult children who still have their health and earning capacity.

You both sit down, discuss it reasonably and write your wills. All you can do is get good professional advice.
I know of two cases where carers manipulated vulnerable ill people into changing their wills. Also in my own family, elderly widowers married younger women, didn't make new wills and therefore died intestate. 2nd wives had the houses cleared and everything sold before the children of the first marriage had time to think. What they couldn't auction off they threw away. There are some awful people around.

@MidnightMeltdown Yes I'm the Will it was split between the four of us. My DB was one of the executors. Unfortunately it made no reference that SM had to stay in the house and I guess, if I was pragmatic half the house was hers so why shouldn't she move. So she moved, and then remarried.
Tbf at the time we didn't raise it and as there was no stipulation about what happens to his share if she sold his Will isn't worth the paper it's written on.
It has been a lesson learnt in terms of Wills, children and second marriages!

I wouldn’t expect to inherit from anyone except my parents (which I have done but obviously I’d rather they were still here and still enjoying life). In the scenario suggested, I would want and expect my dh to leave everything to his children.

But if you decide to change your will, they could get zero. That's a huge risk that your husband is being very naive about.

I would always give my children first. I have three children and if I were writing a will with a long term second husband involved, I'd probably do a 25% split for each child and husband. So they all inherit equally.

I get not wanting to leave 2nd spouse out but they'll have their own assets I'd expect. They can leave those to whoever they want. But NO ONE gets the chance to screw my kids especially in these times where the younger generation are likely to live a much harder financial life.

So if you die before your DP, will he leave everything to your shared child and nothing to your own children? That doesn’t seem fair to me.

I cannot understand why you would leave everything to a second partner and nothing to your children from a first marriage

You are a bit of a cunt if you do this

@TwigTheWonderKid Sorry to hear your circumstances.
You can specify that the house can be sold & another purchased - this is what we did
For example if he downsized & there was £100k excess then at that point the 50% of that could be given to them.
Ours also specified that I was solely responsible for paying the mortgage.
I hope that helps

My mum is the second wife and has one child with my DF now deceased (me) and I have half brothers and sisters from his first marriage. He put his half of the house in trust for us which is to be divided up when my mum dies. I will inherit her 50% share of the house and my dads 50% gets split between the rest of his children so me and my half siblings. It's a fair way to do things and means if my mum needs care in the future only the value of her 50% can be taken into account and it ring-fences the rest for his children as she doesn't technically own that half, it's in trust. She can however use the full value of the house to move and downsize in the future, if she releases equity, half is hers and half goes in the trust.x

I agree with this because imagine the new DH or wife leaving it all to their own kids.

I think there are limitless variations on 'the right thing to do', depending on the exact situation. A friend of mine married a man with a five year old DD, sadly her mum had died when she was tiny. They went on to have two further DC together but they had only been married eight years when the DH died.

My friend was left everything and then proceeded to carry on bringing all three children up on her own. When the DD was an older teen her DGPs started stirring the pot, asking about her mum's money and why it hadn't gone to her. Completely ignoring that my friend had been bringing her up and paying all costs for the last few years! DD eventually understood (it wasn't a significant sum anyway, Mum had died very young), but a sense of entitlement over a sum that was far less than her DSM had spent over the years did not make her late teens any easier!

I think one of the issues is that very few people revisit wills as often as they should.

in my opinion the most common time to make a will is immediately before or after having children. At this point in time you will be focussed on the need to name guardians should both parents die, and the need for a surviving spouse to have enough money at their disposal (easily) to bring up the child should one parent die.

Therefore, at that time, the most common thing to do is leave all to a spouse for them to use as they see fit.

It is very common, after that will, to leave the will unchanged for decades. And that is the will that enables the surviving spouse to leave everything to a second spouse and disinherit children.

I wouldn't have married my husband if he stipulated that I had to leave the house I'd paid 50% for as an elderly widow so his still working children could get their money earlier.

When we married dh had nothing. Due to his divorce settlement his ex got the house, car, and had already taken any cash assets.

so from out pov his children will inherit- they’ll inherit the house he had to walk away from which will be worth around 800k now.

my children will inherit my house, which dh moved into. Worth about 500k.

i’m the high earner, dh salary goes on cms and his own spending, I pay all bills etc.

his children and ex will no doubt see it as incredibly unfair if he dies before me and I get “everything”. In reality everything is very little.

the only thing is if his ex leaves the house to her OM. Nothing we can do about that though.

I don’t like to generalise but I think women tend to be quite pragmatic about these things. The only people I know who died without a will (my own dad) or have refused to make one have been men. I couldn’t believe that my husband was so reluctant to make a will when he has a child and I don’t! I had to really work on him to persuade him to do it. At one point he thought it was ok because he had a will when he was married to his first wife. I had to explain that it was void on his wife’s death.

It’s not just that you need to make your wishes clear it’s also that the admin and bureaucracy is horrendous enough with a will, but without I can only imagine how long it would take to sort out these days

My mum had to do it when my dad died intestate in the early 90’s but things were simpler then and he didn’t have a lot to leave anyway.

Unless you are really rich..£5million plus perhaps, beware of trusts. You also need trustees that are likely to survive you.

I'm in Italy and here the law says that there is part of your wealth (half?) that must be left to your children. You can't cut them out!