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!

You're not going blind. If you're talking about the amount of Inheritance Tax paid then it isn't stated explicitly but can be inferred.

The OP stated that her DD had been left £1.9M after the death of her aunt (and previously her aunt's husband).

Assuming that the aunt's husband left everything to the aunt then the aunt would have a nil-rate band allowance of £650,000 (2 x £325k). Since she does not have any direct descendants (eg children or grandchildren) then she does not qualify for the Main Residence Nil Rate Band which could have increased the allowance to £1 million.

If the net amount is £1.9 million and there is an allowance of £650,000 then that implies that the gross amount before inheritance tax was approx £2.75 million

If an aunt dropped a tray of 19 donuts in to a family get-together and your daughter took the tray and said "all of you can have two donuts between you (about half a donut each), but I'm keeping the other 17 all for me" I don't think anyone would disagree that daughter is being a selfish, greedy pig.
But each donut represent £100k. The stakes are 100,000 times higher. How is she not being a selfish, greedy pig?

Yea I had that happen in my family. Not to me directly but my grandmother and her two siblings. It destroyed that part of the family, and like I said in an earlier post, my grandmother chose to give up on her part of the inheritance completely to keep her peace of mind and sanity. Her two brothers became estranged and the rest of the family still have to listen to tales of the injustice and deal with the residual conflict. Hence why I’m strongly in favor of giving everything to charity OR equally to remaining family members, by degree of close relation in terms of lineage, not relationship. Mixing favoritism and money is a recipe for disaster as we see here.
the daughter is young and doesn’t need that much money and a lavish lifestyle for money that’s just a windfall. When something comes to you by luck you should share that luck. That being said, the OP also sounds not happy for her daughter at all, so it very much sounds like the whole family (including the aunt) have somewhat unhealthy dynamics.

Because the daughter didn’t ’take the tray’ - it was given to her.

how are they not being selfish greedy pigs by bitching about money that isn’t, and was never, theirs?

This is one of the most ridiculous analogies I've seen on here and that includes the person who likened an Easter family gathering to a BDSM party the other day.

The aunt didn't drop the donuts in to a family get-together. She gifted them to the daughter.

The daughter gave some to her family, ate some herself and put the rest in her freezer for later.

I wonder when the op's son last saw his great aunt.

You’ve said yourself your daughter and son don’t get on. I’m guessing she’s not close to the cousins either?

Your aunt is not a mother, it’s reasonable enough for her to leave her cash to the person who spent time with her, which was your daughter.

It’s the way it goes. The best thing you can do is point out to the rest of the family that neither your daughter nor your aunt has done anything wrong. They haven’t.

But the daughter wasn't being paid for being close to someone. The money isn't being apportioned by a ranking of closeness. No third party opinions of "closeness" are needed.

She got the money because the Aunt wanted her to have it. That's it - case closed. It was Aunts money and she chose her favorite relative to have it.

No one dropped anything, you numpty.

The Aunt consciously gave her great niece her money because her niece spent time with her and no one else did.

And others have had it in their family and not had the same result as yours, because the members of those families understand they’re not entitled to money not given to them, that wasn’t theirs in the first place. That it’s created conflict in your family is the fault of this misplaced entitlement and the inability to deal with the resultant bitterness. Oh well, if they want to consider themselves to be poor hard done by victims for the rest of their lives then that’s on them 🤷🏻‍♀️

The aunt owed no one fairness, and the daughter doesn’t need to ‘share the luck’ beyond what she’s already done. The aunt gave the money to the person she wanted to give it to, that she’d fostered a close relationship with. Too bad, so sad for those others wanting to lay claim to it. Whether you approve or not thankfully doesn’t come into it. You don’t need to like it.

Are you jealous of your dd op? You sound so. For whatever reason your dd send sung ticked it off. Good in them. They enjoyed each other's company. You should be happy your dd is dirted and your aunt had a good life with dd.

Because the aunt didn’t drop her money to a group of people. She left it to one person!

And calling this girl a selfish greedy pig is just nasty and thoroughly horrible.

• Dd and your aunt ticked it off. Stupid autocorrect

Are you on crack or something?

What sort of analogy is that?

Inheritance is always interesting and an insight into how people (even Internet randoms) view fairness. My Paternal GPs decided when writing their wills that their estate should be split 50/50 between their two children. And then, they decided that because their son had four children between two marriages, and their daughter had one child only, and because two of the grandchildren had been pushed aside by the second marriage, they split their son's half of their estate into shares so that all their grandchildren participated. TBF, I received £3750, so nothing life changing even in 2005. For the record, I don't expect to inherit anything at all from that parent either. I'd quite like my christening gift napkin ring given back to me though.

You (and your whole family, but you especially) are being cheeky and grabby.
If the cousins can’t buy a house in the midlands with £50k deposits each then they’re doing something wrong…
Your daughter didn’t have to give you anything and has given you all massive wedges of money, and you are all extremely ungrateful. No wonder she’s gone to London and you haven’t heard from her. I don’t blame her, you sound horrible.

If I was your dd and being treated this way I’d wish I hadn’t bothered sharing.

So you dumped dd on aunt for chunks of summer, tried to dump other kid on her too but it didn't work so you dumped him on your own parents. Your dd actually liked your aunt and is probably sad she's passed being as they've done so much together and had a lot in common. You reap what you sew! You should have got your own arse round there if you wanted the financial rewards- she can't have been that bad for your dd to keep going back. Can't believe you're all so surprised and bitter about it!

A friend’s child is different. Knowing nothing about the situation, assuming this friends child has formed some kind of relationship with you and the others haven’t, for whatever reasons . You’re not related. If one family member favors one child over another child, and takes that favoritism to the level of leaving all their money to one child and not a penny to the other, then that’s an adult not taking their responsibility towards the younger generation seriously, and definitely not thinking of how to create harmony, community or justice. Having that kind of money and leaving it to someone who is going to spend it on a lavish lifestyle at only 24 doesn’t seem great either…in the end, that money may be more a curse than a blessing for the girl, but of course that’s just on an ethical and philosophical level, sure she doesn’t care about that as she’s jetting around the world in fancy clothes and enjoying her life in a mortgage free flat in central London 😅😅 seems neither her, nor the aunt was preoccupied with ethics.
But, OP, I get how you feel! But seriously, you also need to do a bit of soul searching and get over this, as others have said, you couldn’t reasonably expect to inherit a penny, so no reason to be upset you didn’t, and in the end your daughter did give you some of the money. The person I feel the most sorry for is your son, he must feel really left out, as he is young too and could probably do with the support as much as your daughter. He is the one I’d have given a huge chunk (if not half) to, if I was the daughter.

Dropped a tray of bloody donuts?!
A will is the last wishes of the deceased and hers was for her niece to get her money. You are supposed to respect the last wishes, nobody is entitled to anything unless they stated it in their will. Greed, always comes down to greed when someone dies which is frankly disgusting. This young girl has been given a life changing amount of money. She was kind enough to share a large amount whilst keeping enough to buy herself a property and set herself up. I really wish her well, such a shame when true colours of family members show.

The daughter owed no one anything and still gave everyone something - the opposite of greedy and immature. You and your family, on the other hand are whining about fairness, making passive aggressive digs at her and begrudging her good fortune instead of being happy for her. So, in other words, being greedy and immature.

Cant stop laughing at this!!!

Do you think that people have overindulged in chocolate this weekend and are having some sort of sugar reaction and gone mad?

Yep. I have no children. I’m planning to leave everything to one niece and one nephew. Their siblings and cousins will be pissed off but they never bother to do so much as to send a Christmas card.

Because the aunt didn't spill something- she made a conscious choice to give her money to someone who she loved, spent plenty of time with and got along with. Why should she have given it to wider family who didn't give a monkeys about her unless they wanted childcare or a present?!?! £50k is a good pay off for them when they weren't meant to get a bean.