Why don't sole beneficiaries of a will share more?

[malificent7]

I mean in cases where it's clearly unfair. Such as the step mum inheriting all when there are children about or one sibling unexpectedly inheriting everything.
Jusr a bit shocked about inheritance threads ( and concerned about my own stepmum getting everything).

But that could happen whatever the circs?

i won’t inherit the “family estate” as my mum has spent it all. She’s not great with money, has never worked since we were born, an enjoys a lifestyle not worrying about money.

someone else may end up paying for care and leaving nothing to the kids.

unless you are parent 1 and you cut your spouse out and leave everything to your kids- and as I said previously this means nothing joint, no joint accounts, no joint names on deeds etc, you are taking a risk leaving it to your spouse.

if parent 1 wants the money to go to their kids, they should sort their finances and will do it goes to their kids.

Nothing like money to divide a family.
People are not obliged to share, and it's up to the person who wrote the will to leave it to who they want too.

My friend’s dad remarried a couple of years after his wife died (had been married 50 years and had 5 kids). He then died a few years later, and left everything to the new wife, because he trusted that she would look after his kids. She didn’t. She left it all to her own kids. That definitely is not fair. My friend is unbelievably sanguine about it (and she is not wealthy, even a 5th of her parents estate would have made a massive difference), but she just accepted it and moved on. I’d have been spitting feathers!

If you read my other posts, he made his choice and wrote a will, but due to reasons too complex to explain here he did not have his will correctly witnessed, which meant that although he had written one it was not deemed valid and he was declared intestate. He would have liked to have divorced her, but she threatened to take his family’s business from him in the divorce courts, so he allowed her to disappear from his life not expecting her to come back. Despite writing a will which meant his estranged wife was taken care of with a home and income (and he had conversations with his chosen executors, which included my husband as my dad knew his will would be the subject of scrutiny and he deemed my husband to be ‘a fair man’ in his own words) as well as making sure family assets were kept within his blood family, ie his children, his wife chose to take it all for herself, destroying a family business that had been built up over 4 generations. She did not need to do this, she was not left without a good home and income if she’d followed the intentions of my dad’s will. She did it because she could, and she was greedy. She did not follow my dad’s choices. He was an idiot for believing she would, and an idiot for not making sure his will was watertight in following his choices.

The point I am trying to make, using my own family’s sorry story as an example, is that a person should make sure their will is properly written, properly signed, and properly witnessed, and to understand the issues which can arise if you remarry. There are so many people out there who do not understand all of these issues. My own father thought he would be able to sign his will and get it witnessed once his final days were happening, sitting up with his children all around him, and was surprised by the fact that his final moments happened very quickly. He was distressed in his final moments by the sudden realisation he would not be sitting in his deathbed, compos mentis, surrounded by his children while he bestowed on them his wishes. It’s not a situation I would wish on anyone, but it highlights the scenarios that can happen which people just have not even imagined.

Just get your wills all written properly by solicitors who deal with this sort to thing. That is the best way to prevent ‘weird shit’ from taking place and causing more distress than it ought to have the power to.

The wide variety of opinions on this thread alone shows what a contentious issue inheritance is. Most cases of disappointment come about because the person who died did not leave a suitable will. Just write a will.

Well arguably it's the wishes of the deceased, who's money it is, that you want disregarding to benefit someone else the dead person didn't want to benefit. How is THAT fair?

But yes, on the surface if I inherited money from an aunt for example, I'd offer to share with my sister. If parent was generally a narcissist or otherwise abusive and I felt me being some heir was a game play I'd share. But if you're the "new" wife of a decade who's cared for him in his dotage whilst the kids visit once a month and moan about how they really need their money now, then why should you share?

It's not the man's house. It's the matrimonial home which is jointly owned.

I’m often curious about this. If he had specified in his will that his new wife was to inherit everything, but that she should then (in her will) leave something to his kids, would that stand up legally? Or would it just be a request, that she could legally choose to ignore?

If people like having money and wealth they need to make it for themselves.

Not rely on getting it from others people's work.

That’s a very narrow, ableist view of the world.

Of course no one is entitled to money through inheritance. But most people would agree that we want a world of decency and fairness.

The problem is that it’s human nature to hang on to wealth once we have it in our grasp. So people who have wealth to pass on need to think this though very carefully and not just trust that the beneficiaries will sort out any future complications or changes of circumstances further down the line.

Because that's the whole point of making the will. If the person dies without a will it is shared. My family didn't agree that I got more in inheritance than they did, but they also did nothing for the prior 10 years in supporting them, whereas I did. I would have done it for nothing and only only found out about the division after the person died. But, it was their last wish.

In the unlikely event that I inherited everything from my parents in favour of a split with siblings, would I insist on splitting the inheritance equally between us knowing that if I take the 100%, I could give my DC enough money to buy a small home each outright. Would any of us, hand on heart, share if we inherited everything from a parent or spouse. People general look to protect their offspring first.
When I redo my will, I'll make sure that half of everything DH and I own at the time of my death will be held in some kind of trust for my dc to be inherited on the demise of my dh.

@NonPlayerCharacter
No he didn't want to include his daughters in his will.

Yes I would share with my sister if she was disinherited. My relationship with her is worth more than any money.

The thing is about a will is it is at the instruction of the person whose money it is.

so, nothing unfair about the recipient at all. Because that’s who the person wanted their money to go to and that’s kind of the end of it!

if they wanted other people to have a share, they’d say that.

some families are just bitter and grabby.

Why not?

People are strange. My MiL explained that if my DH dies before her (we've been married a long time and have very joint assets/plans) that his inheritance, which much of it he should technically own already due to business concerns and forms part of both our retirement plans, would go to the kids so I don't get it. So she'd rather my theoretically bereaved kids have a tougher childhood than necessary to prevent me indirectly benefiting. I get blood lines and all that, but she would rather we struggle financially and they inherit at 18 to prevent the situation where I could remarry and leave their money to a future spouse and leave my kids out. I suppose there's no right and wrong answer to this, you just have to hope it doesn't happen and make your plans to be reliant on just yourself not anyone else.

Yes, I would, and I say that as someone who's not particularly close to my siblings. It honestly wouldn't be worth the fall out that could last generations and from which there'd be no coming back. Money is very important, but it's not the most important thing of all.

Perhaps my mother will need care and there'll be no inheritance anyway. I can't assume anything.

I can sort of understand this.
If she gives it to you, then theoretically you could remarry a compulsive gambler who loses all of it in 6 months, leaving nothing for her grandchildren. Obviously in an ideal world you wouldn’t do that, but love is a strange thing and no one knows what they might do.

I get the premise “it’s their money to leave to whoever they chose” but frankly it’s pretty shit to have kids and then not want to do all you can to improve their circumstances. Of course having the freedom to choose is a right but that doesn’t negate the fact that some choices (like sideways disinheritance) are pretty abhorent.

I agree with you there, but this is MN and any child who is disappointed that a dying parent chooses to leave them nothing in favour of leaving everything to a person they married 10 minutes ago is labelled ‘grabby.’ In MN-land, once you have a second spouse all previous offspring should fuck off and keep quiet, that bit of their life is over and they should move on.

That's what I meant by "If you don’t have excellent legal advice, it’s very easy to find yourself in this position".

My DF & DSM have if written in trust, but it looks years to get it right - without good legal advice, I think people can just assume that all their wishes will carry through when their main beneficiary dies, without realising it can so easily be diverted away from those they may have wanted to inherit further down the line.

I suspect it’s the same cohort of people on MN also who think that the youth of today would be able to get themselves on the property ladder at 25 if only they had fewer coffees and stopped buying avocados.

Yes indeed I am aware of that and that is why the status of relationships is so important. Perhaps if step children were nicer to step parents those step parents would be more inclined to see through their partner's original wishes as reflected in mirror wills rather than change them after

I didn't inherit anything from my dad.
Me and my step mum are not close.
However I don't expect anything of dad's to be shared. Because my step mum is still here living. Isn't that the way it goes? If one of them outlives I would think this is normally the case