To ask if step children are involved how your wills are written?

[Notyourusualfamilysetup]

Bit of a back story to me asking! Just me and dad for a long time, he got into a relationship when I was in my teens and they had my brother (his girlfriends only child). They moved an hour away when DB started school for him to go to a good private school and I stayed in my home town although still saw them regularly, my SM was lovely to me but haven't seen that much of her in recent years.

Sadly my dad died when my brother was quite young, he was a very wealthy man and left everything to SM (fair enough) she sadly passed recently and left everything to my brother.

She was a SAHM and the large inheritance that my DB now has was from my fathers very successful businesses and estates that he left to SM.

The money is not as much what bothers me, although believe me I could really use even a fraction of it. I would give all the money in the world to have my father back but I just wondered if this was a usual way of doing things?

It has left me wondering if my dad had just forgotten about me, him and SM were never married so as I understand he actively made his will this way.

So AIBU to ask, if you are not in a nuclear family and step children etc are concerned, what is the set up of your wills? Have you factored in all children?

Sorry it's a bit of a morbid questions really.

I have read a few of my ancestirs' wills and it seems to be a straightforwrd thing, throughout history, to leave the house/farm/goods and chattels to the wife but only for her lifetime and that she can't leave them then to anyone else. I saw at least one stipulate in the will that if she re-marries it the child then gets everything, immediately, sidestepping the mother.

So I don't think that was unusual at all in the past and solictors have drawn such wills up for centuries. Maybe less common in this day and age where people accept blended families as normality and no longer see the danger of not protecting their own children, from a first marriage.

This is really shit of all three of them. Dad should have put some sort of clause in the will stating you were to get x amount, SM should have thought "hang on OP is his daughter too, she should get some" and your brother should have done the same! Three times they as a family have failed to include you. How awful.

Me and OH own a house together. We don't have wills yet but have DIS through work, mine goes to him and his goes to me. I would never dream of "forgetting" to pass some of that on to his daughter!

May be trickier when we have our own kids as to how it would all be divvied up but absolutely she will not be forgotten. He was her dad before he was my husband!

*I am afraid its very common. Usually down to fucking stupid men not listening to the advice they are paying for.

I suspect you father would have been advised to leave assets in trust for you which your sm had a life time interest in. I suspect he said no dont worry she will do the right thing, which she didn't.* It's true. My Dad was the loveliest, kindest man you could meet. He wrote his will along with his second wife - mirror wills. No complaints until Dad was actually DYING .

Sorry bold fail there.

Has your half brother discussed it with you at all? It seems rather unfair that you get nothing. My grandfather died before I was born and my grandmother re-married. My mother and aunt got a quarter of the estate each, with second husband's daughter getting a half ( her brother died), but the house, shares, assets etc. all came from first husband, not second. We also discovered that the house wasn't really "sold" it was given to one of my step cousins, as their uncle was an estate agent and fixed the sale. My father left everything to my mother on his death. My mother had planned a 50/50 split between me and my twin sister, but twin is campaigning for 80% to her and her three children and 20% to me.

I have read a few of my ancestirs' wills and it seems to be a straightforwrd thing, throughout history, to leave the house/farm/goods and chattels to the wife but only for her lifetime and that she can't leave them then to anyone else.
Bit more complicated these days though when assets may have been accrued through the efforts of just the wife...

Interesting question. We have it so that it all goes to each other initially but then it is split so 50% is shared between DH's kids and 50% is shared between my kids (who also both happen to be DH's).

It seemed a fair way to do it and is on the basis that all our money is joint but effectively half of it is mine and half is his, so should be shared between the children of each half.

We have to redo wills soon for another reason so are thinking about it again and reassessing.

From what he said during his last illness it appeared my dad thought he and SM had arranged mirror wills where respective DC would inherit equal shares of the residue following the death of the second spouse, but I've seen his will and it's nothing like that. We got nothing, and as SM has dropped us like a stone, it seems safe to assume our dad's money (and whatever was left of our mum's) will go to our stepbrother.

My ex remarried a woman with nothing . He had property bought partly with money he stole from me when he left. Has,also inherited from his parents They have been married a long time but she is much younger and will probably outlive him. He has a good relationship with his adult children . I hope he has made provision in his will . I suspect his wife would leave everything to her daughter (not e x dH child) and my children would miss out. Their DGM (exs mother) gave them a lump sum before she died to make sure they got it so I think she thought the same way.

As you say, because they weren't married, he would have had to actively put your SM down as sole recipient. In all honesty, if I was the SM, I would have given you half, or if that was impossible for some reason, left it to you in my own estate. Seems very unfair. In my husband's will, everything goes to me, but in our case the children are both of ours, and then I decide how to divide between the children. We have further clauses for if we both die! If I had step kids, I would fully expect to be entrusted to do it in the same way, there's no way I'd leave out another child, whether step/adopted/lived with us or anything. I'm pretty outraged on your behalf.

You've been hugely screwed over op, I'm sorry.

We're setting up our wills shortly.

If we die together: assets split 50/50. Dh's half gets split between all 4 of his children, my half gets split between the 2 we have together.

If one of us dies first, everything will pass to the remaining spouse but with a legally binding agreement to split assets 4 ways upon the death of the final spouse. I believe this can be tricky, because the remaining spouse could change the agreement post-death or of course go on a spending spree.

This is so common. In my experience, men don't care about DC from first marriages, once they are in a new relationship the new DW/DC are prioritised.

This is one reason why I am in favour of giving as much money away as you can comfortably afford while still alive.
Our DC have savings and premium bonds in their names which I twitched about leaving in their names when they turned 16, after reading this I'm glad we did. They haven't spent it, but I would rather than go wild with it than someone who shouldn't get their hands on it. We also have a house deposit, in our names, each to give them when they buy might have to rethink that.

You've been screwed over. What does your brother say about it?

I would seek legal advice. If SM died without making a will I would imagine you will have a good chance if you challenge it.

It's awful but what can you do. My mother has remarried and has told me that I am inheriting nothing from her as that is my father's responsibility, she has two boys that are older then me, both well off already, and it's split 50/50 between them.

Our wills stipulate that everything from DH and I is split 50/50 between the DCs. He's DS1's Stepdad but agreed when we drew up our wills that it would only be fair to split everything equally. He's lived with DS1 since he was tiny, though, so probably has more of a sense of being a parent to him than others might.

I would seek legal advice. If SM died without making a will I would imagine you will have a good chance if you challenge it

How? Sm and dad weren't married. He made a will to leave everything to sm. perfectly legal, o/p was an adult, not a dependent child.

Sm is then entitled to leave everything to whoever she wants. If she didn't have a will it would go to her next of kin- her son. O/p, again, is an adult and not related by blood or marriage.

So i can't see where the claim is?

DH is in this very position now with two differences: the SM had no children of her own, and she died intestate, so legally speaking the estate would go to her two elderly brothers, neither of whom have children. It's a huge balls-up, but entirely chatscteristic of DH's father and stepmum's thoughtlessness. Fortunately, the brothers seem prepared to do the right thing morally and are going to do a voluntary share of the estate, but we don't yet know how much ( might be a token amount) and are totally at the mercy of people we've never Met. I'm thinking about starting a thread about this too, but thought I'd get totally flamed for being greedy when we have no entitlement to inherit. It's not about that - it's about DH's parents finally taking responsibility for their actions.

How many people on here have wills?

Get them done. Now.

If you're in England or Wales have a look at the 'Inheritance (provision of family and dependants) Act 1975'. You might be able to challenge this. Well worth speaking to s solicitor.

My aunt died recently and had never had any children. When she got with her (now dead) husband he was a lot older and had a grown up son. My aunt and her partner married so that she would be financially secure on his death and he left a small amount to his son in his will and some shares, but everything else went to her as she was a fair bit younger and he knew shed'd need it all.

Her husband died 25 years ago so she had been a long time on her own. When it came to writing her will, my sister and I are her nearest younger blood relatives and technically she could have chosen to leave everything to us if she wanted but she did what was right and fair and saw that half of it was hers to do what she liked with and half was her dead husband's money and he would have wanted it to go to his son (aunt's step son).

I think this is fair. Her husband had been the wealthy one when they first met but the way she had managed the money after his death (and didn't spend it all!) meant that SHE made the money grow .

half to step-son and the other half to her side of the family seems absolute right and fair to me so I'm sorry that your dad didn't think of you. Maybe he thought that your step mother would do the morally right thing. I think it's quite shitty of her to be honest not to have thought of you. Unless she genuinely thought that your dad wouldn't have wanted you to have any for some reason.

Bitch! (Not you!)

So sorry this has happened to you, OP

I think your chance of a claim is limited, unless you were dependent on your father, ie under 18 or special needs when he passed away.