Should money given to dd for medical procedure be deducted from inheritance?

[dorolee]

I thought I’d ask for will advice after seeing a recent thread where posters were really helpful on the issue of whether to divide equally between dc. I want to make sure I’m being fair.

Dh and I have 2 daughters, both married with kids of their own - at present, our will divides everything between them equally.

Dd1’s daughter had severe scoliosis and needed surgery - the family decided that the surgery available in America would be better for her than the NHS operation, as it allowed her to retain some flexibility in her back.

We gave about £90,000 to dd1’s family to cover about half of the cost, dd1’s husband’s parents gave the other half. This was a few years ago now.

My question is, when dividing our assets between our two dd’s family, should we consider the £90,000 as part of dd1’s inheritance given early, and therefore leave £90,000 more to dd2, or should we divide our assets as they are equally, as the money was to fund a medical procedure?

Thank you for reassuring me! We’ve always planned on splitting equally regardless of the operation costs, but reading that other thread there were lots of stories of a sibling being given a lot of money while parents were alive, leading to resentment after they died when will was divided equally. I was just wondering what the ‘done thing’ was.

The inheritance is between your dcs, nothing to do with the dgc.

And to answer previous posters’ questions, yes, our granddaughter is doing really well now, thank you! And no, none of our other dgc have the same condition.

Does it have to be USA ?

If it is the new VBT surgery, not available here, Germany does it among others.

USA health costs are super expensive.

Oh she's had it already.

I can’t think that any one would think that a family should be ‘penalised’ for having a child with medical needs.

(But am amazed this surgery was not available in Europe?)

Split equally. You cannot effectively punish one DD for having a child with a medical condition. I know that’s what you said you would do, so I think stick with your gut, you’re right.

@LizardMonitor

It’s VBT (vertebral body tethering). It’s now available in Germany and a few other countries (I think a private surgeon in the UK can now do it), but when dgd needed it, a few years ago, it was only available in America.

I'd split evenly too.

It’s not your daughters fault she was born with a medical complication, I’m sure your other daughter wanted her sister to have the operation. Divide equally, it’s not as if you gave her money for a nose job it was to improve her quality of life, I hope your other daughter would see that too.

Divide equally. It was a gift to your gd, not her parents, and surely no-one would resent this gift.

I guess you could always word the will somehow to state that if DD2 or her child(ren) needed money for surgery required to preserve or enhance the quality of life, up to £90k would be deducted to help fund that, with the residue split equally between DD1 and DD2? So provided no major health problems surface on that branch of the family, everything is split 50:50? Would that work?

I think this could be over complicating things. Lots of things to pin down there, what is 'quality of life', what counts as a 'major health problem', or indeed 'surgery'.

I think the contribution towards your DGD's surgery should be disregarded, it was a gift in your lifetime and if it counted as part of your DD's inheritance the time to have that discussion has gone.

Equal split.

Definitely ignore it and divide the rest equally. What's money for, if not bailing out family health problems??