Imheritance

[EWAB]

My son aged 8 has just inherited just short of £120,000 along with all of his first cousins from a much loved grandmother. Her nieces got a couple of grand. My eldest son her step grandson precisely nothing. She was loved and credited me with encouraging her to travel to see her siblings and she went to NZ with sister last year so no comments that we wanted her money etc. her three children however did expect to inherit but DP's siblings happy enough their children are inheriting [one able to buy outright house in university town}. However, it now appears that the niece has said that MIL arranged the will this way so DP would not inherit and my elder son would not ultimately benefit from her money! I asked my DP if we could arrange things to be more equitable ie leave more to older son. He refused wants his half of our assets to go to his son and my half to be split between both. He is upset and according to one of his sibs has approach sib with three children asking them to make things fairer as essentially instead of will being divided between her own three it was split 6 ways so ultately family with three children benefitted disproportionately. I am devastated for my elder son that he is financially worse off than his brother and for the future.y partner is clearly upset about everything but isn't sharing thoughts other than it was unexpected and he'd hoped to pay off mortgage! It has made me question everything about the grandparents who always seed nice.

So wait- did your eight year old DS inherit £120,000 or a 6th share of the same amount? It's not really clear. There's a hell of a lot of difference between 120k and 20k; if he has indeed inherited the larger amount I'd be telling your DH to jog on with his little plan and that it's not fair to the boys to have just a disparity in "fortunes". Normally I'd be saying, "sorry son, them's the breaks" when it comes to wills and the fallout, but when you're dealing with such sums then it's going to be hard to avoid one sibling feeling resentful of the other as they get older and start thinking about buying their own houses etc. I would try to minimise that as much as I could.

You don't mention your older DS's dad or paternal grandparents so I would presume there is unlikely to be considerable funds coming from that arena. I'm sure you're bringing up your smaller DS with enough understanding and compassion for his DBro that he'll see where you're coming from when he's older.

Why should he necessarily see her child as his own? That might be the case in some families, but in others, especially if the stepchildren are older, it doesn't always work that way. You can be a caring and involved stepfather without necessarily becoming a father.

Of course the grandmother can leave her money wherever she wants. and I understand completely why she would feel no obligation to give a share to a step-grandchild.

But what I read from the (confusing) OP is that DP was told that his mother deliberately skipped her children and left to her grandchildren because she didn't want to risk leaving to her son and have him them split "her" money with his stepchild when he came time for him to die. That would leave a bad taste in my mouth certainly - that my MIL was so determined that the step child didn't inherit 40 years in the future, that she would skip her own children and effectively give 3/4 of her estate to one sibling's children and 1/4 to the other's.

My own MIL has two step grandchildren who treat her as a grandmother. she might not leave them anything in her will but I couldn't imagine her not giving something to her son for fear he might split it 3 ways rather 1.

OP I think you need to take a breath and then do some estate planning that ensures both your children have a roughly equal start in life.

The biggest mistake is expecting an inheritance at all. Never ever count on getting any money to pay off a mortgage until it's in your bank account.

I wouldn't expect money from step grandmothers to be left to step grandchildren: is this the done thing?

Your children will obviously have varying inheritances: why would they expect the same? Their biological parents are not the same. Their extended families are not the same. It is unreasonable to expect an exact split of everything.

And I also don't see why the older child should expect to have inherited anything from from his stepfather's mother. Surely by the time he's starting a family and buying a home etc, he'll be old enough to understand that having a different father than his half-brother, which has led to a disparity in inheritance.

I have no feelings either way on whether her other half should be Leaving money to her child, but she seemed surprised at that assertion so I assumed that she saw their relationship as more than it seems he does.

I'm not sure why it's the dp's problem that the OP's ex might not have much money to leave their son together. It could very well have worked out that the ex is loaded and the OP's older son stands to inherit megabucks too, leaving out the younger sibling.

I don't see anything wrong with dp wanting to leave his assets to his ds but he can't tell you what to do with yours. I would be writing a will to make sure older ds is looked after in the event of you dying first.
I wouldn't expect my dh family to leave anything to my ds and I won't be leaving anything to my dss regardless of if his mother leaves a million quid or none.

This is an issue in many step families and there are regular threads about it on the step parenting board. I think you just have to accept the wishes of the deceased. This will mean that you will not really need to worry about ds2' s financial security in the future and should be able to support ds1 more. To avoid such hurt of feelings I will split my estate between dsc and dc, but will probably have to support dc more while still living.

DH is entitled to distribute his estate as he sees fit, and if he only wants to leave it to your joint son, that's his choice. Equally, you can do what you want with yours. So if you want to give it all to DS1 to even things out, that's up to you.

Re IHT, it's not that there's no IHT for grandchildren. I think the point being made was that DGMs money, by the time it reaches her grandchildren, potentially will have been through two lots of IHT, ie hers and their parents. If she ultimately wants them to benefit, most efficient to skip a generation.

What kind of relationship did your son have with his step-gran? Because it sounds like- if the sister is to be believed- she didn't consider it close at all and figured your DP and yourself would split your own monies between your boys.

Is your AIBU:

AIBU to think DP should rearrange our finances to benefit my son more then ours?

Or

AIBU to think GM is wrong for favouring like that?

Looks more like your wondering about the DP more instead?

Neither are unreasonable. It's a shame on the latter but I can understand why your DP wants to leave half his money to your joint DC.

Just out of interest, what if you had another DC? Would you expect DC2 to split his money? How would you balance it?

He refused wants his half of our assets to go to his son and my half to be split between both.

Just realised this. It sounds like your DP doesn't think of your DS as his son. Sorry OP, how does that affect your relationship with him?

Not knowing the ages/how the kids are can't comment if this is unreasonable. Your DS could be in his twenties and not at all raised or thought of as child or son by your DP or he could have been raised alongside and be very close to in age. The former wouldn't be unreasonable to me, the latter would be.

Damnbamboo if your dh leaves everything to you and you leave everything to your 3 children then your sd inherits nothing from her father. How is that fair?

She gets a 1/4 of his money although we are each others sole beneficiaries so it's left to me in the first instance but it will make its way to her upon my death, or sooner if I chose. I'm pretty sure I said that.

I have a 2 year old son with DH and a daughter from my previous marriage, so we had a similar talk about inheritance recently. DH wants the best for his son and he thinks the best legacy he can leave him is a close relationship with his big sister. So his estate will be split equally between them both.

YABU. Nice as she was, she wasnt your oldest son's grandparent at all and had no obligation to leave him a penny.

DH wants the best for his son and he thinks the best legacy he can leave him is a close relationship with his big sister

It;s neither here nor there in many families. Lots of step-parents, like myself, don't live with their SC and never have done. Why would I leave a 1/4 of my estate to someone else under these circumstances? If I die, my SDs life will not be much affected. That of my three boys will be. Money won't bring me back, but if they are young when this happens, it will help make things easier for them. If your DD is being brought up by your DH as part of one family unit, then it's a completely different scenario. Well done to your DH

where are you OP?

sounds exactly what i would do. it is unfair for your eldest son to inherit both from blood relatives and step relatives while your younger sin only inherits from blood relatives - unless your ex is going to leave him something too to even it out??

But inheritance is never just about fairness and money. It's about relationships and is often interpreted as an expression of how someone views the relationship (hence supposition that op's mil didn't see her ds1 as a real grandchild). If I split my money equally between dsc and dc (even through dsc will inherit much more from other relatives) they will all know how much I loved them. If I only leave it to dc, dsc will be left questioning our relationship and wondering if I ever really thought of them as part of the family. It will be divisive and as pp said, I want them to know they were loved and have a good relationship with their half siblings.

talking stuff through is always a good idea
isnt there a risk one of your children will feel pushed out and rejected if you let their stepbrother/sister inherit from you and their mum, so end up much richer than you?

Unfair? Fairness has nothing to do with it. A woman has left her money to her blood relatives.

I also found an earlier comment amusing...it is only right that people leave money to whomever they choose... but not with such a large sum of money. Like, erm, sure, leave one of my kids a tenner but not the others. No problem. But try leaving one a considerable amount and suddenly BIG problem. I don't understand the logic of that.

An inheritance is an inheritance. It should be an unlooked for bonus, from a loved one. Not a hotly debated, fully expected right for any younger generation.

I'll say it again: All grandparents, get spending and don't stop until all you leave are debts and happy memories. Your kith and kin won't respect your choices, whatever you do!

don't you just hate posts made by someone who doesn't come back

OP has disappeared

One thing clear from this thread is that it's difficult / impossible to find a solution which everyone would consider fair

Unfair? Fairness has nothing to do with it. A woman has left her money to her blood relatives.

I think the problem comes about when a step child does not have ongoing contact (or a good relationship) with their blood relatives on the other side (ie on the father's side if the situation is about their step-father). If they have been told that they have been accepted into the step-family as if it was "their family" it may come as a nasty shock to see that although this might have been true on some levels, it wasn't true on all levels. In fact it may feed into their deepest insecurities.

I said earlier that I would be horrified if my DP wanted an unequal split based on "blood" in the event we both died. This is because as far as I am concerned (and he is too) the children in this family are all equal family members and who is related to who by blood and who is related to who just by love is irrelevant. We are all family and all children are equally loved by all their "parents" (whether step or blood).

I accept that all families are different, and that in many families this does not apply, but in families where the children believe they are all loved and accepted equally regardless of blood, to find out that at the end of the day that's not true can be very hurtful. If the child had been led to believe throughout their life that they were just as much their step-grandparents grandchild as the blood grandchildren, then finding out on death that this was not the case would be very unfair.

good point AnonForNow