Large sum of money being given to sibling

[Zippy27]

To set the scene: there is a 12 year age gap between myself and my brother; I am the older sibling. My brother has had a lot of help financially with uni costs (I didn't go) including rent. I was given 5k from my parents for my wedding 14 years ago. However, my brother's rented accommodation has recently been put up for sale and the landlord has offered it to him to buy. He will have a mortgage but it turns out my parents will give him 90k for the deposit. When I say give, I do mean give - not a loan, they won't own part of the house - he is just being given it. It is half of their 180k savings. Both parents are retired. I have been told that when they make a will, it will state that myself and my brother will have half each of what they have BUT it will be stipulated that I will get 90k before the rest is divided up. However, as this may well be in 20 years' time, this doesn't seem at all fair to me. Who knows what their financial situation will be by then. My Dad justifies it by saying that they weren't in a financial position to give me that sort of money when my husband and I bought our house, which I'm sure is true, but surely this is still grossly unfair? We're not exactly living in a mansion and the house we have lived in for over 10 years still needs a new bathroom amongst other things. Would anyone else by severely pied off in this situation? My Dad explained that it isn't because my brother is "the favourite" (he is and always has been) but because he is "high maintenance". I am so hurt, angry and disappointed that I haven't spoken to or messaged my parents or brother since I was told about this 5 or 6 weeks ago. For context, my parents live across the road. They don't even give enough of a sh to contact me and find out why I have stopped visiting (probably because they know). Would anyone else be upset by this situation?

@Kickstartplease

Your situation sounds very different from Ops, and indeed my family. I think most siblings would be very understanding in your situation.

But Ops DB and mine, were both given money due to their wants, not needs.

In my family I am the sibling that has received the large sum of money £120k. One sibling has had substantial sums between £10/20k several times but as loans, some of which he didn't even start to repay for years always interest free.
The other sibling has never had anything & is fully aware & happy with the situation

I'm sure this is what you tell yourself, in order to justify the situation. But unless the left out sibling is a extremely wealthy, I suspect that they are devastated but too polite to say anything.

Similar thing happened in my family - but much much larger sums of money. So one sibling & offspring were set up for life, never needing to work, lived the life of Riley. Other sibling worked themselves into an early grave and offspring constantly struggle to survive.
Seems absolutely heartless to me, but it seems it happens so frequently.
The whole golden child/scape goat is so damaging, but families are still doing it.

This seems a bit naive. It might work for you, but in many families there's one child who works their socks off, and another who prefers to party and take it easy. Should they end up with equal amounts? How about if one child does all the caring for elderly parents, while the other isn't interested in contributing at all?

You actually believe that parents don't have favourites.....

Oh bless you!

A relative of mine did that in their will after being bullied in to giving my sibling £60k that was pissed against the wall.

I'm meant to get the first £60K from their estate to equal it out but that won't ever happen as care home fees have pretty much reduced their potential estate to null.

It’s a 50/50 chance that your parents will have all of their money used up by care home fees. You are also likely not to see a penny until you are well into your sixties. Live your life assuming you’ll get nothing folks, you’ll be MUCH happier for it!

Missing the point entirely but that’s ok, I was expecting people like you to be on here! 👍

I looked after my mother when she was dying. I had more free time than my siblings. In my mother's will, everything was split equally between us all. I didn't expect anything more than them, they didn't expect anything less than me. That was truly treating us equally. That's all OP wants.

No, there isn’t. Most people don’t go into care homes.

That's actually not true - I said in my post I received much less than my sister when my mum died and I think you are handling this badly - I under why. But I think your parents should be able to do this and you need to accept if you want a relationship with them. The bitterness will eat you up you need to move on.

I think your post says more about you than it does OP.

I'm very surprised by what a hard time you are getting on here OP because of a recent post where a mother had two daughters with different fathers and the grandparents of the second daughter were saving up a big amount of several thousands to give to her on her 18th birthday, but the older daughter didn't have grandparents who could do that. So the mother said she wanted to save up the same amount so that her older daughter would also have a nice nest egg on her 18th birthday.

Posters were up in arms about how unfair she was being to give more of her own money to her older daughter and not do exactly the same for the younger one, missing that if she did that the younger daughter would still have a massive financial advantage over the younger one.

Her AIBU was that the grandparents were being super weird about letting the mother know the amount they were planning to save which was making it difficult for her to know how much to save for her older daughter.

But so many posters thought she was being awful by trying to make the siblings start to adulthood equal.

I think some people just like an argument - I bet if you'd done 'a reverse' you'd have totally different answers.

I think their response is the most patronising and self-satisfied of the lot, to be honest. Almost congratulating themselves on their wonderful parenting!

I'm sure this is what you tell yourself, in order to justify the situation. But unless the left out sibling is a extremely wealthy, I suspect that they are devastated but too polite to say anything

Not the case in my family. My Mum discussed things at length with my brother to see how he felt before mentioning it to me. He was and still is totally behind my Mums decision to help me.

Interestingly though he doesn't see it as me being favoured. If he'd had reservations my Mum would have said nothing to me.

Seems perfectly fair to me. Annoying and frustrating and something to moan to your friends about but fair enough. It's very very difficult to not pander to children with depression because there's always that constant niggling feeling that what if this one time I don't help, is the one time they do something terrible (obviously I don't know what sort of or how bad depression your brother has, but if it was like my brothers you could not ignore him when he reached out/needed something).
Different children need different things at different times, some siblings are always going to need or just get given additional support, it's just life, partly the lot of bring the older more capable child. It's certainly not worth losing your parents over especially when they are going to give you £90+ when they're no longer around! I expect your sibling has given your parents far more stress and grief over the years perhaps he's not 'the favourite' just you're the easier one. I'd say get over it and be incredibly grateful for loving parents and the £90k+ that's coming your way one day!

@Blondiebeachbabe
They are definitely very happy with the situation, it is not just something I tell myself 😂 I can assure we are very close & we have spoken about it. Maybe the difference is we all discussed it before a decision was made & asked for their input, whereas this situation has been presented to the OP as a done deal. They wanted to be able to help my child & we all live too far apart to help with time/care
@mynameisVicky you may be right, to me my relationship with my siblings is important. They have opinions that I value
@Zippy27 I think you should re-read what I wrote, I think you should talk to your parents if all other aspects of your relationship with them has been good, only you can decide if this is the last brick in the wall if other things have been going on

YANBU to feel hurt by this. It is unfair. Of course by the time any potential inheritance comes about, any money now available may well have been eaten up by care costs and the like. Having said that, it is their money to do with as they please.

It is up to you whether you let it affect your relationship. More importantly I feel, is to not let resentment eat your own life. You need to find a way to live with this. You may find it easier to go low or no contact while you work through it.

This is exactly what I don't understand when parents treat their children differently. Do they not see that they destroy their children's relationships with each other?

So held to ransom!

Do you think if one child suffers from depression it's not a good idea to try and ensure that the siblings have a good relationship? So after you've gone, they've got someone looking out for them? Is this doing that?

Or doesn't it matter after you've gone?

The better way to help someone with depression is not to pander to them, but encourage them to deal with life and Easter they're able to look after themselves!

Parents are not obliged to see their DC through uni. Great is they can but not obligated.

I don't entirely understand your comments. My parents also helped my brother emotionally and he is incredibly strong and resilient. Everyone's experience of depression is different as I said. If my parents had ignored my brothers emotional and financial and physical needs during his worse bout he would have killed himself, or ended up homeless, destitute, certainly not with the home, wife and children he has now.

I'm also not sure how your comments address the OP's problems?

@Jessieshome you confirmed your parents pandared to your brother..... can't see that's helpful for anyone.

My comments help OP because she need have no responsibility when the DOs are gone.

Pandering is just not helpful.

You parents money, their decision about what to do with it.

It is unfair, I agree, but remember you can only control what you can control. You cannot control this. However, I'd look at what £5k bought 14 yrs ago vs today to calc its real value, then look at what 90 needs to look lole in the future to be equivalent. Subtract one from the other and that's what you could ask your parents to set aside for you....

As I've said twice now, different people have different types of depression, you have no idea what my brother and parents went through, if they had ignored his phone calls, ignored his need to pay overdue bills, ignored police phone calls, he would have killed himself, at best ended up homeless. Sometimes pandering and being constantly there at the drop of a hat is exactly what the person needs. But it completely depends. Perhaps the OPs brother is just a bit rubbish and being unnecessarily pandered too. Perhaps she has a very valid point. Perhaps he's a second away from suicide, who knows.

My brother is amazing and strong, successful, in a loving relationship with gorgeous happy children, thanks to my parents and his resilience. Without them and what they did he'd almost certainly be dead.