Granddaughters left with £200,000 legal bill after arguing over £50 inheritance

[SerendipityJane]

Pretty certain there was an Ealing comedy about this ....

https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/21/granddaughters-angry-getting-50-will-now-face-200-000-legal-bill-20878694

People are really telling on themselves in this thread..In what world do you think you 'deserve' to inherit from people you have little to no relationship with. That's what wills are for, so you can make sure the money you've worked for goes to the ones you love and actually showed up to. These grabby, shallow end of the gene pool, cheeky beggars got their just desserts imo.

🙌🏻

Personally I think it's a real shame if your hypothetical grandchildren are stuck in insecure rentals because they can't afford a house at 10x salary, put off having children until late 30s because they cant afford childcare etc etc when you could leave them a deposit for property

So I'm responsible if these people who don't exist yet can't afford a deposit on a house in the year 2050? Maybe they turn out to be lovely, hard working people who'd use the money wisely or maybe they'd be the type who could piss away a small fortune because they have no common sense.

Are future generations just entitled to your money because they share your DNA?

I do understand that some people feel strongly that money should "stay in the family" and there's an obligation to pass it down thru the generations. But I honestly don't feel that way. I'm not saying there's a "right" way to look at it, but I do know what works for me.

Some people are strange.

My late husband's daughter made it quite clear that I couldn't be stepgran or honorary aunty to her daughter. I honestly didn't expect that I would be, though - in retrospect - it rankles that her mum's affair partner was allowed to be 'grandad'. Her choice, however.

After the affair partner died, the daughter's partner complained to me that he had left everything to the ex. According to him, something should have been left to the grandchild, because she called the affair partner 'Grandad'.

I found it utterly bizarre. Both the daughter and her partner were well off - they both worked in the oil industry and were high up in the companies that they worked for - so it's not as if they needed the money.

My husband's funeral was during lockdown and the daughter decided that she didn't want to risk the funeral. She also thought that it would be too much for the now adult grandchild, so none of them attended. Instead, I was asked whether the ex could represent them.

Organising the funeral under those circumstances was far from easy, as anyone else who had to do similar during lockdown will know.

To my surprise, when she phoned, the daughter stated that I was "family" and they loved me. I can't say that I'd seen any signs of that before.

I had the awful and surreal experience of selecting my husband's funeral from an online catalogue. Over the phone, I explained the difficulty to the daughter and said "Some of the coffins are unbelievable. There's even one in the shape of a Tardis."

She laughed and said "Is that what you want when we organise your funeral many years from now?" I can't remember what I replied, but inwardly I was astonished at her expectation that they'd be organising my funeral, since there was never mention of my being family until after my husband died. (We were married 27 years. We'd only been married for 6 years when the grandchild was born.)

I kept thinking back to her partner's complaint that nothing had been left to the grandchild and that the title of "Grandad" conveyed some sort of obligation - since we were told that I'm not even an honorary "aunty", I guess that means that there was no expectation of an inheritance from me?

I have to say, I did chuckle when I saw this story.