My aunts inheritance choices seem to have destroyed my family

[Afana]

A little context, my aunt passed away at the start of last year, her husband had passed 10 years prior, she never had children. They were well off. Massive large house worth more than 2 million and some other assets, including a holiday home etc.

My DD is 24, lives in London where my aunt was and was "named after" her. She is the only girl, my brother has two boys and I have a boy, my dad was her only sibling.

My aunt really treated my kids like her own grandkids but more so my daughter, she spoiled her, had her over in the holidays etc. Even got her a job!

Now when my aunt passed everything was left to my daughter. This was unexpected. After inheritance tax and giving the donations to charity she had arranged. There was around 1.9 million left, the house was sold to cover the inheritance tax.

My daughter used a deed of variation I believe to give £50,000 to myself, my son, my brother and my brother's two sons. £25,000 to my parents, which is all they wanted, she did offer them more.

My aunt wrote a letter explaining her reasons and it was effectively she's my favourite.

Now recently my daughter bought a lovely 2 bed flat worth over a million in a lovely part of London near Hyde Park. She's reduced her work to 4 days, she got rid of basically every item of clothing she owned and bought all new, has been on endless holidays.

Now my son and both her cousins, not to mention myself and my brother are somewhat resentful. We aren't a rich family, we live modest lives in the midlands and everyone thinks her choice screams of greed. She's mortgage free in a flat while her cousins are still struggling to buy.

Yesterday was Easter, everything was tense, my daughter ended up leaving early with her boyfriend to go home. We haven't heard from her since!

AIBU to think my aunt going about everything like this has irreparably damaged our family and it will probably never be the same again. I do think my daughter was greedy and should have shared more equally!

If I've understood your OP correctly, your DD has given away £300,000 of her inheritance to various family members which she was in no way obliged to do. Are the relatives who have accepted money from her the ones making comments about her being "greedy"? If so they are hypocrites and should be ashamed of themselves.

Were you hosting the Easter get together, OP? If so why on earth didn't you tell whoever was making the comments to stop being so rude and disrespectful to your DD? I'm guessing because you resent her as well, despite taking money from her.

It really doesn't matter what any of you think about your Aunts inheritance decision. It was her money to do with as she pleased and she chose to give it to your DD. Your DD has been generous with family, and sensibly invested on property. She hasn't given up her job and gone off on a permanent gap year which some people in their early twenties would definitely do with that kind of windfall. Frankly, she is the only one in this story that comes over at all well. Your Aunt may have been onto something.

As an aside, it's strange on MN that people are fine with disliking different family members, i.e not treating them equally. But demand fairness when it comes to money!
Parents should treat their kids equally. Similarly, I think grandparents should treat their kids, and by extension grandkids, equally.

There's no reason for any other family member to not do as they wish however. If a family has lots of siblings, and two are particularly close, one grows up to be rich. Why does rich siblings suddenly need to consider ALL his siblings?

It's just life. And OP should be happy that daughter is fully sorted.

If you and your brother don't like to see your kids "struggling" with only £50k, then you can always give up your share to your kids.

Team Aunt here too.

She lived her life on her terms, which is fine. I doubt you would have changed your plans to accommodate doing reasonably large amounts of childcare each year. DD fitted in, so was looked after.

Why leave money to people she barely saw?

Plus at 24 I was set up with my now-DH and hadn't really had any parental involvement in my life for a while. Bit surprised saying it's the parents' role to be managing their money for them, especially if they work in finance, ffs.

Now my son and both her cousins, not to mention myself and my brother are somewhat resentful.

I get why her nor other and her cousins are resentful

But you are her parent! Get over yourself.

Inheritance doesn’t have to be shared. I think your daughter was generous. Some people would have given nothing.

This. I'd rather my dd was blessed with financial help than myself!. In fact don't think I could've taken any money whatsoever from her!!

Of course she could do what she liked with her goods and chattels we all can. That why we make a will and it's not just divided up between whoever. Why should she have given money to people she had no relationship with, would you? It sounds as if she had a close bond with her great niece and acted accordingly.

Your aunt's inheritance has done nothing to your family, you family have managed to be jealous, greedy arseholes all by themselves.

This.

If I'd had a great-aunt that left me nearly £2m, my parents would have been delighted for me. They wouldn't have expected me to share, or griped about it.

My DB might have resented it, but as he has MH issues and is unable to work, all it would have done for him would have been to stop his benefits and he'd got an inheritance he probably would have just blown it all during his next manic episode!

Regardless of the rights or wrongs of her decision, it is going to obviously have an impact on family relationships. As a parent, I would feel worse for my son in this scenario than I would for myself, but I would not blame him, his cousins or his uncle for feeling quite resentful about the whole situation.

All those 'holier than thou' posters saying it's the aunt's money and everyone else is being awful - I really doubt they would not feel jealous if they were in your son's position. I can't imagine this happening in my family, where fairness matters more than anything else and this really doesn't seem very fair - clearly most people here are more fans of 'take what you can get and don't look back'.

Now I can see I’m very much in the minority here, but unless the rest of the family was absolutely horrendous to the aunt, I think the aunt leaving everything to one niece is very weird and inconsiderate. It isn’t the fault of the others family members that they didn’t live in London, so didn’t have the same opportunities to visit the aunt as regularly. I’d hate to think my family members would essentially “award” the nieces and nephews who for various reasons visited them the most, in their will. Likely I won’t have a lot to give away, but regardless how my relationships will be with my two kids, I will leave them exactly equal, and I’d do the same if I didn’t have kids and had only nieces and nephews.

my own family was destroyed a generation back over an inheritance dispute where two brothers weren’t given equal parts, the third sibling was my grandma, she just walked away from almost all her part in the dispute as her peace of mind and dignity was worth more to her. And for the record, she wasn’t rich at all.
If I was the daughter, I would have divided everything out equally to the other family members.
Most commentators on here are behaving as if they were Gandhi himself - I’m pretty sure most would have been sore as well if they’d been in the other family members’ position…

I really hope this doesn't get picked up by the DM or similar. I would be devastated reading this if I were your daughter. You truly sound as though you dislike her. If my mum wrote something like this about me to a forum full of strangers I would genuinely be heartbroken.

You've reduced the beautiful relationship she had with your aunt to your daughter being a pretty little accessory for your aunt to show off. You've dismissed any and all concerns about you daughter's current wellbeing as 'she'll be fine' and also tried to downplay the vile comments she received from her family yesterday.

I normally try to see both sides of the story but you're a mum of a very young adult who now runs the risk of seeing this splashed over the media. Shame on you. There's no defending your actions here.

You're looking at this the wrong way. Your dd has had the great good luck to be the favourite of a well-off aunt with no children. My brother might win the lottery tomorrow - I wouldn't be crying that it's not fair. Sure, the aunt is a little eccentric. Most people would have split things more evenly in their will. But it's her money. She can leave it to who she likes. In families some families have more than others - and not always because we've earned it. If the aunt had died in infancy none of you would be any better off. Your dd might marry that bf of hers and have children - that money will come in really handy for your grandchildren. I just can't understand why you aren't pleased!!!

Yes, but you also said that she has a share of leasehold, which suggests you don't know the difference between a share of freehold and a lease (unless your daughter has spent over a million on shared ownership in which case, you really should be afraid for her financial acumen).

You also said you think there is no service charge on the flat, when even in a share of freehold there will definitely be a service charge for communal areas. In a flat like the one you have described elsewhere, a floor of a house in Bayswater, Kensington or Knightsbridge, the service charge is typically going to be between 2000-4000 a year. Those two errors suggest to me you don't know anything about money, which means you don't know if she knows what she's doing or not.

Exactly and this is why I call BS on this post

If I inherited £1.9m there is no fucking WAY I'd be giving away £300,000 of it to relatives I wasn't close to and didn't even like. Your daughter is more generous than I would have been!

You sound like you don't like your daughter. Some of the comments are disgraceful.

Why couldn’t she do what she wanted, within the law, with her own money? She was under no obligation to leave her money to anyone.

It boggles my mind that OP Is effectively jealous of her own daughter who has found herself in a very fortunate position. She gave away 300k which she didn’t have to as well. It’s sad that YOU are allowing this to destroy your relationship with your daughter.
making jokes about greed🤦‍♀️, I’d have walked out too

Your daughter didn’t have to give any of you anything. Be thankful for her generosity.🙄

You and the boys sound incredibly greedy and ungrateful. Your daughter had a relationship with the aunt. The boys didn't because they simply didn't like the same hobbies as the aunt, so that's nobody's fault. You seem to think the aunt should have changed her ways to get closer to her nephews, but why should she? It was her life to live as she wanted it!!

Your daughter has done more than enough for her cousins and for a brother who doesn't even get on with her.

If I were her, I'd be going very low contact with all of you

So what is the point?

You asked "AIBU to think my aunt going about everything like this has irreparably damaged our family and it will probably never be the same again".

Well on that point yes you are right, it won't be the same. Where you and lots of poster differ is why. You & your family are blaming it on your daughter not sharing the money more equally (given the Great Aunt didn't). Many posters including me think if anyone has 'destroyed the family' it's because you've all been very ungrateful to your DD (and downright horrible to make nasty jokes about her so-called greed).

FWIW I'm a divorced child free aunt/great aunt and will leave my money to whoever I choose. And it won't be the siblings/niblings who have taken very little or no notice of me over many years. So if I drop dead tomorrow a couple of them will indeed receive most of it (nowhere near 1.9M but still quite a lot). Having said that the ones who won't get anything/get much almost certainly aren't expecting anything, because they know we aren't close, so I doubt there would be family squabbles.

1.9 million in London is not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things. especially if she wants to live there long term and have a family.

she needs proper advice and support (with her grief among other things). just because she works in finance doesn't mean she is making sensible decisions.

but more importantly OP, you and the rest of the family are behaving abominably. you should be happy for her, and grateful to shared some of her inheritance (which she wasn't obliged to do).

I agree op, it would have been better to split it evenly