A long one... my mum and step dads new will... more £ going to step dads god daughter than me (my mums daughter!)

[NannyL]

My Mum and my step dad are currently making their will:

My step Dad has no children; my mum has my sister and me. But my step Dad has 1 godchild, she is my age, a distant relative, (his aunts grand child I think.)

Anyway my step dad is a very difficult man (he has no contact at all with his father or siblings as they refuse to talk to him) and my mum is very weak and doesn?t like arguing with him over anything.

My mum really thinks that if they die their house should be split 3 ways: between me, my sister and his god daughter.
He thinks (and this is what they will do) that he will leave all his half to his goddaughter, and that my mum can leave her half (i.e. ¼ each) to my sister and I.

I'm REALLY cross cause I think WHY should she get double the amount as me and my sister? (is this really selfish?)

His reasons behind it are: his goddaughter will never inherit anything?. BECAUSE her parents (and grandparents, and her husbands family) have been the type of people who live in council houses and drink and smoke away every penny while living on the dole and doing no work. (I'm not saying that all people who don?t own their own homes are like this (indeed most are not), but her parents (and my step dad and his family etc) ARE ?those type? of people)

And he thinks its unfair on the god daughter that me and my sister will have shares in both of our sets of grandparents estates, and ultimately my father and mother both have large houses which will eventually be left to us as well. (but also my parents and grandparents have had good jobs, are intelligent people and have worked hard to earn their houses!)

Also my mum put (slightly) more than half the value of the house ?in? to the house (Money from divorcing my dad, in my mind it will always be my dads money) Whilst my step dad put in nearly half the value of the house, the reason he had enough money to put in was he was lucky and bought a house that went up in value by a HUGE amount?. Much more so than most other homes which have all gone up loads?.. fair enough, but most of the time he was living in it he was on the dole (or whatever it was called) and income support (or whatever) were paying the interest on the mortgage, so it wasn?t as if he was ?earning? his house going up in value, he was sitting on his bum (living off the state) and was extremely lucky.

I'm feeling REALLY hard done by that my mum cant be bothered to argue with him, and really cross that he wants to give every penny of his half to her. (she doesn?t like arguing with him, leaves that to me )

We (my step dad and I) have NEVER got on, and he has never been nice to me?. My mum went with him while I was 15 years old?. On my 2nd meeting of him ever he told me if I was his daughter id be living in the streets of London and not welcome in his house ? a few months later I was seriously injured in a car accident (was hit at 50mph as a pedestrian and nearly DIED) and neither he nor my mum came to see me for over a week (they don?t ?like? hospitals) and when he did all he did was moan about loosing his camera (bear in mind I had been in intensive care and high dependency and was still very seriously ill)?.

Am I being unreasonable to think that his god daughter should get twice the amount of money to me should they die?

(also I have nothing against the god daughter? she IS a nice ?normal? person, works hard and owns her own house etc, unlike her ancestors )

[Cloudhopper]

Good on you NannyL. It sounds like you are well on the way to resolving it with yourself.

Sometimes it is really hard to be the magnanimous one, but it is invariably the best in the long run. Your poor mum is probably beside herself about it all, and it might even cause real discontent between her and him. Even though someone you care about might choose a partner you wouldn't personally choose for them, you have to accept them.

Having said all of this, my siblings and I just had the most almighty bust up last weekend over $30. It wasn't the money at all, it was the principle, and I managed to bring us back from the brink (I think) by just accepting it and trying to see the other point of view, no matter how unreasonable it may feel.

[margosbeenplayingwithmynoonoo]

When my Gran died, my cousin expressed regret that my Gran didn't have a property to pass on. She had the opportunity to do a right to buy but didn't take it up. I have seen a lot of people trying to sort out their loved ones estates and, quite frankly, I was glad she didn't have an estate large enough to go through probate.

It left us free to grieve.

I hope that you will be able to sort out your feelings before anything happens to your mum.

[NannyL]

Cloud hopper i thik you are compeltely right and have summed it up perfectly!

Yes we are from very very different backgrounds... him and his family and me and mine.

been thinking about it more and more, and i think i will give up thinking about it... i cant change it, and all of my and my mums family seem to live til they are about 100 years old anyway... lets hope my mum follows and there wont even be any issues until i am a very old lady and by then it wont even matter at all!

(my step dads family all seem far less 'healthy', and dont seem to live to such extreamly old ages as my family do... as my mum said... she will probably outlive god daughter anyway.... who although is a very nice person is extreamly (and dangerously) obese and drinks and smokes a lot and eats a very poor diet... ofcourse she might change that, and beocme helathier

(before anyone says i dont care how fat she is is or that she drinks and smoke etc etc, she is a nice person in herself, and the 2 of of us get on ok!)

But anyway im not going to let it bother me anymore.

Also thinking about it, if my mum and dad were still together there would only be 1 house to inherit anyway, so perhaps i should think of anything on my mums side as a bonus....

[redtoenails]

I think he's entitled to say what happens to his half! YYABU

[Cloudhopper]

I guess the underlying emotional hurt in this is that it seems your step dad doesn't appear to feel any ownership towards you and your sister, and therefore is leaving his 'full' share to the god-daughter. It must feel like a rejection, even if there have been previous tensions.

I would reconsider. It is always better to give someone the benefit of the doubt on their motives. Maybe he sees his goddaughter as someone who has worked her way up from very humble circumstances, and who will get no other windfalls in her life. He might think the money is more useful to her than to you - especially if you are going to inherit from elsewhere.

It sounds like your values are very different and from different backgrounds. I must say that your resentment towards his 'luck' in gaining on the housing market, through no 'merit' of his own, comes out loud and clear - maybe this is obvious to him too?

Having said all this, I think it is very unlikely that he is intending to hurt you and your sister in all of this. Maybe in the same situation any of us would be the same?

I feel bad for you as there are obviously a lot of issues wrapped up here, but for your own sake I would find a way to let go of it and to accept it over time. It will be far less damaging if you find a way of 'explaining it away' to yourself without malice on either side.

[christywhisty]

Sorry I think I have it the wrong way round it should be Joint Tenancy where you can't leave it to anyone else.
My mum looked into to it when they got divorced and as I said when Dad died the house automatically became my mum's.

I think it's probably far more complicated than they think to do what they want

[NannyL]

Im not quite sure what they are, but their legal person is coming round to make it so that if onw of them dies first, either my sister and i still get what my mum wants us to have / god daughter still gets what step dad wants them to have

thay are making it all legal now so if either dies 1st they other cant change it

[christywhisty]

I apologize but I haven't read the whole thread so sorry if this repeats what has been said before
It depends how the deeds are set up on the house.
There are 2 ways, Tenants in Common or Joint tenants

If they are tenants in common (which is usually the case with married couples) unless they both die together the house automatically goes to the survivor. It cannot be willed to anyone else.Also it is not subject to inheritance tax

It then becomes the property of the survivor who can will to whom they want. So effetively if your mum died first your step dad can will it entirely to his god daughter or if your sd died first then your mum can will it to you and your sister.

With Joint tenancy then it is owned say 50/50 and the 50% can be willed to someone else.

My mum and dad were divorced but still owned the house together. When Dad died the house went straight to my mum even though they were divorced.

[NannyL]

madmumof 5 thats awful

[madmumof5]

my mum and dad bothed passed away and in the will me and my real sister were left £4,000 each and our step sister was left £140,000 he didnt even have anythin to do with his daughter as she disowned him yet me and my sister cared for them right till the end

[alipigwidgeon]

I agree that wills bring out the worse in people. Just from the other side of the coin though. My father's (an only child)father re-married and sadly grandpa died first. My father was left nothing other than a paltry piece of furniture as everything went to the wife and her two sons. So I can personally see both sides of the argument here. I always found it so terribly sad that my father had no keepsake of his parents. His step-mother threw out all the photos and personal possession and my father didn't get to go and pick something out. I would have said it was very unusual to leave everything to a godchild unless you had literally been the parent due to deaths of biological parents. Normally you leave a specific bequest. Each to their own though.

[agnesnitt]

"In my eyes, when my mum and step dad married everything that was his and hers became theirs and my mum thinks as its theirs (and no longer his / hers)"

Isn't that one of the basic tenets of marriage though?


Random thoughts on the god-daughter:

My immediate thought was that your step-father thinks so much of his god-daughter that he wanted her to be treat as well as the blood family your mother brought into their relationship. Not that he valued yourself and your sister less, but that he thinks of her in a similar way to the way your mum thinks of her children. If there are three 'children' in a relationship, does it not make sense to treat them as equals? Maybe that's all this is?



I feel for you in that your relationship with your step-father isn't in any way perfect, but I feel you should just let it go. Neither of you are going to change at this stage, and to get yourself worked up over it is like as not to cause naught but ulcers and further bad feeling.


Agnes

[NannyL]

thank you for all your opinons...

i see some people strongly have opinions on both sides.

Why my mum / step dad chose to tell me about this i dont know.... but they did and now i know, and i cant change that

Ultimaltely i REALLY hope my mum and step dads lives go by as they plan, down size when they retire and enjoy the value of their house on holidays and fun things It si THEIR money and i do hope THEY spend as much as possible how they want while alive!

also should they decide they would rather leave anything / everything to some charity / hospice etc thats fine, if its what they choose!

It is unlikely they will be dieing in the near future anyway (OMG i hope not, that would be the worst thing that could happen in my life rigth now) equally i very much doubt my father and even my grandparenst will be going anywhere any time in the near future (fingers crossed, touch wood etc)

All are very healthy so long may it continue

I very much doubt i will inherit anything in the enarish future at all, and my grnadparenst may have decided to leave all their £ to charity anyway.... i dont know (and dont want to know) they have never told me, i dont care so long as they do what they want in the end.

Yes my relationship with my step dad DOES annoy me.... i cant stand him for many many many reasons that i wont go into here....

In my eyes, when my mum and step dad married everything that was his and hers became theirs and my mum thinks as its theirs (and no longer his / hers), they have 3 people to share it out with and to divide 3 ways, but she doesnt LIKE argueing with him so will do anything for a quiet life

Some people agree / some dont.... i guess thats life.

Just hope it does not become relavant for quite a long long time!

Thank you for all your comments!

[VoluptuaGoodshag]

It is only money and to die with money in the bank is an act of gross stupidity. I hope to live my life like that. You make your own way in life. After reading other posts it really does seem like you just want your mammy to side with you. I'm sure there is a lot of history here but the will is not the issue and I would echo what has already been said and concentrate on having some lovely times with your mum.

[startouchedtrinity]

I do agree with what aloha says about shrugging your shoulders, there is nothing you can do about it and you have to find a way of living with it and moving on. This whole situation is causing you hassle far more than it is him.

[aloha]

Actually I have every sympathy for the family situation. Must have felt awful to have your mother marry a man you couldn't stand when you were a teenager, and it sounds as if he has been very hostile to you. It all sounds as if it was very, very tough on you, and I'm so sorry your mum didn't support you in the way you would have liked and probably quite reasonably expected. I'm sure you felt betrayed and abandoned in many ways. I would have.
Yet for all that, the money is still a different issue. I think you can only shrug your shoulders, think 'I never expected any different from him' and move on.

[3andnomore]

no meneither, tbh... think we had a fair few threads we agreed at in the past....
I just thought it was funny right this minute, iykwim

[startouchedtrinity]

aloha, of course money isn't love. But it so often becomes a metaphor for it, or the lack of it. I suspect this wouldn't be an issue at all if her stepdad had been a different sort of person.

I am sorry about your dad, I did leave a message for you on another thread (many moons ago I was ionesmum). I know there's nothing I can really say that helps. xxx

[aloha]

I never thought for a minute that we couldn't

[3andnomore]

what aloha said






















see we can agree....

[aloha]

NannyL said, "me and my sister will have shares in both of our sets of grandparents estates, and ultimately my father and mother both have large houses which will eventually be left to us as well."
Whereas the goddaughter (whom he presumably loves) will only ever inherit his share of the house - there is nobody else for her to inherit from.
In terms of finances, NannyL is set to be far better off than her stepfather's godchild. She isn't at all hard done by. If she feels sad about her stepfather never liking her, I can completely understand that, and it is a shame. But it's a totally separate issue. Money isn't love.
My dad died recently and had not a penny to leave me. We aren't dripping with trickledown wealth in my family!

[startouchedtrinity]

Sorry, I sound like you were marrying your mother! Also I meant that you woulsdn't admit needing your mum when you were 15, not now.

[startouchedtrinity]

NannyL, I really feel for you. Being 15 is hard enough, God knows, without having to deal with someone who doesn't like you marrying your mother, just when you need her (not that you admit that, of course). You may have been 15 and, if you were like me at that age, a total pain but you were the child and your stepdad the adult. That the relationship between you failed is down to him. As I said before, this whole business of the will goes back to his non-acceptance of you as a member of his family. When you marry someone you get the whole package including dcs and your stepdad didn't take that on board. I wonder why he has made sure you know the terms of his will?

Aloha, each situation will be different. From what I can gather here regardless of income source the capital invested in the marital home (which seems to be the bulk of the estate) was roughly equal. Anyway, as I said before this obviously reflects the OP's relationship with her stepdad in general and has to do with a lot more than money.

[agnesnitt]

The house should be left to whoever the person making the will wants to leave it to. There is no right and wrong, it's about the wishes of the one who signs at the bottom.


I can't believe how many people seem to think that it is acceptable to expect some form of mention in a will. It's really rude and makes them look like nothing but money grabbing asshats. It's shameful.


Agnes

[aloha]

Well, suppose there are four stepchildre. Two are the children of the mother, and their natural father is a millionaire, and his only children, so going to inherit from him. The mother and the stepfather are relatively poor but own a house worth, say, £280K. He is a widower, and his children will only inherit the house.

What does 'treating all the children equally' mean in this case? Should the house be left in equal shares to all the children, leaving two of the children with a total inheritance of £70K while the others will eventually inherit at least £500K, or should the inheritance be largely left to the stepchildren without the expectations of another huge bequest?