Giving grandchildren different amounts of inheritance

[Darinki]

Good evening all,
I am posting on behalf of a friend who isn’t massively tech literate but is seeking advice, obviously she will get professional advice but it is causing a lot of worry and I want to give her some opinions to help in decision making, she knows I am posting and has encouraged it.

My friend is in her 70s, she’s recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, her husband passed away in 2022.
She had two children, one passed away many years ago the other is in his mid 50s. She has 3 grandchildren, 2 are her sons and 1 is her late daughters. They are all between 18-22.

When it comes to assets all she really has is her house, she got a valuation done recently and it was was around 1.2 mil. She also has some cash savings but she suspects these will be spent on care as her condition worsens.
She has already spoke to her son and he has suggested when she re-writes her will they just skip a generation and go straight to the 3 grandchildren.
Her daughters daughter got inheritance from her mum, she owns property in London worth around 700k at 22 so not doing badly at all, she also has no student debt.
Her sons children will have student debt and other than small savings from their parents no house deposit etc.
Her son thinks because of this the inheritance should be split 10/45/45 or similar. This would still be say £100,000 if not a little more to the cousin who owns property already, but it would also give his 2 children the opportunity to buy a better property. They all live in the London/SE area so housing is expensive!
My friend however is worried that this is unfair on her granddaughter, and is getting herself very stressed trying to decide. She sees merit in both arguments.
so
YABU - It should be equal they all deserve the same
YANBU - It makes sense to give those who have less now more

Thoughts?

She needs to split between her children, so 50% to her living son and the other 50% to deceased son’s daughter. He can then split between his sons 25% each.

leave the "son's half" to her favourite charity - grabby git

50% to son, 50% to deceased grandaughter. If it skips a generation, then 33% to each. If relevant, smaller and exact amounts or bequests (e.g. certain items or my jewellery, a painting, something personal) to others that have done more or she thought of more. Life's circumstances should not come into it. Unless the beneficiary has been really absent or abhorrent in the deceased's life, which in this instance does not seem to be the case. Yeah, he should jog on with his influencing, it is unpleasant.

This

This. When my MIL died she left a third to my DH and a third each to her deceased daughter’s two children. It’s caused a rift and my DH was so upset he’s no longer seeing his two nieces.

To add insult to injury, most of the inheritance came from another relative who had died recently. My DH had helped look after him, yet the two grown up grandchildren and never even met him.

So her son wants to almost disinherit his niece in favour of his own kids. Lovely. She has no mum, and presumably the boys will also inherit from their dad later in life, so she'll be really losing out in relative terms. If both kids were alive, they would probably inherit equally, which would leave gd better off long term if her mom was still alive.

It's a terrible message and very hurtful to the gd. She'll feel less loved by her grandmother, after already losing her mom. I've read many threads on this topic and it causes resentment and can harm relationships if things aren't equal/fair.
$400k each is a massive amount of money for the boys to pay off any school debt. This makes me angry and he shouldn't be pressuring her.

With all due respect, why is he not seeing his nieces? It's not their fault he doesn't like the will distribution.

Those are special circumstances that don't apply in this case. And the go seems to have a food relationship with them all so that's not a factor either.

I would do a fair split between the 3. The other two will presumably get an inheritance from their father when he eventually passes just as the daughter did when her mum passed so there's nothing to say they couldn't be in a better position in the long run.

The only caveat to that for me would be if one of the 3 grandchildren did significantly more for her in terms of care etc. Otherwise a 3 way split is fair.

Keep it equal.

Either 50% to the son and 50% to the granddaughter (her mother's share of inheritance),
or an equal three-way split between the three grandchildren.

The solo granddaughter may well have a lovely big house in London but her mother is dead and that's devastating at such a young age. She shouldn't be penalised for losing a parent.

Everyone in this situation is going to be financially blessed if sharing a 1million property inheritance.

Your friend should do whatever she feels is right in her own mind, then make it clear that it's not up for further discussion so that she can try to relax a little in whatever time she has left.

What a dickhead. Don’t skip a generation -
50% to the DGD as a proxy for her mother and the other 50% to the uncle.

My friend’s DF died when she was very young and basically all of her DGM’s estate (having outlived her son) then went to her aunt, the surviving child (friend was left some personal belongings). It was only in adulthood that it dawned on my friend who wrong this was and it’s impacted on her view of her aunt (who was an adult at the time of inheritance).

So under the 'normal' course of things, the GD would get her late mother's half and the son would get his half. Of course, he's perfectly at liberty to ask for his half to be passed straight on to his own sons - in a way, this would level out the field, as all of the heirs would be of the same generation.

However, it sounds like he's already engineered it as a given that his sons will get an extra third of their cousin's money - but he still thinks this is unfair.

The house is worth £1.2m - whether his sons get their fair 50% (whether now or when their father dies) or whether they insist on taking a third of their cousin's inheritance too, they will each either get £300K or £400K, which are both huge sums of money - but this is somehow not enough to help them get on and be debt-free, so they 'need' £540K each?

If he's including the money and resulting financial opportunities in life that his sister left to her daughter as part of the whole 'reckoning' of who has and who should have what when they need it, does that mean that he's planning on leaving the majority of his money to his niece when he goes, to make it all properly equal again and avoid capitalising on his sister's tragic early death - considering that his sons have already had the bulk of theirs to set them up in life from their GM? No need to answer that one; I think I can guess...

What a truly nasty man, seeking to rob his own niece of most of her inheritance by taking advantage of her losing her mother tragically young. It's not even like his sons won't already be left in an extremely privileged financial position from their GM's will - he's just wanting to get them even more for no reason other than that he thinks he can.

It's interesting how the people who suggest skipping a generation and splitting it equally between the grandchildren very frequently 'just happen' to have more children themselves than their siblings do...

Just imagine somebody actually having the thought enter their head - let alone acting on it and taking advantage in their own family's favour - that a very young adult between 18-22 is 'already very lucky' for having lost her mother and thus needs to lose some of her 'privilege'.

He is an absolute turd.

@Wiunthoopered I don't think your DH comes out of that story well. At all.

When my grandmother died she left a third to each of her children. As my mum predeceased her we received her third. My uncle suggested that we divide our third between her seven grandchildren.
My younger sister pointed out that her unexpected pot of savings was the result of my DF gifting my grandmother my DMs pension. He had asked if we were happy for him to do this and we had no objections. I had actually forgotten he’d done this and since he also predeceased her the payments stopped on his death.
My uncle soon dropped the suggestion since most of my grandmothers savings were actually our inheritance. We were not interested in claiming them.
I think because we had inherited my DPs estate they thought that we were ok for money.
it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
Had my DM still been alive there is no way she would have suggested it, we pointed this out. We also suggested that it would be perfectly ok for them to pass on money to their children if they wanted to. Also that their children would inherit when they too died.
I think the idea came from the DW of one of my cousins. It later transpired that she had got into a bit of a financial mess through gambling and thought that grandma’s inheritance would pay off their debts.

As a result we have made our will so if our DS predeceased us our estate goes to my two nieces. DH’s DM has been underhand with her estate (long story) so DH does not want anything going to his family. Most of our money has come from either my business or inheritance from my DPs so we feel that it should go to my family.

Inheritance really does bring out the worst in people. Fortunately my DS is an only so he will have no problems, hopefully.

Even when my DM died, my aunt ( DM’s SIL) pestered my sister for items of her jewellery that she had apparently promised to my cousins. My DSis was in charge of her jewellery and conveniently lost the key to her jewellery box.

Having been on the end of “unequal” inheritance it was the most polarising experience and would not recommend it. There are still family members barely talking.

Eithrr 50-50 to each child (so 25-25-50 to grandchildren) but if genuinely skipping a generation then I could see splitting it into thirds for the grandchildren as okay.

My parents are currently deciding whether to do separate inheritance for the grandchildren (mine and my siblings children). One of my siblings has 4 children and is always skint but seem to get bailed out. My parents subsidised their rent for a long time and now the other side are doing the same so IL can be a SAHP. I told my parents it’s their money not my inheritance if they want to leave a portion to each grandchild but it still bugs me a bit because it feels like my sibling repeatedly gets bailed out and rewarded for being fiscally irresponsible.

In the same vein why should the granddaughter be “punished” because her mum died.

This would still be say £100,000 if not a little more to the cousin who owns property already, but it would also give his 2 children the opportunity to buy a better property. They all live in the London/SE area so housing is expensive!

It's not the grandmother's responsibility to see that her son's children have enough money to buy property in one of the most expensive real estate markets out there!

There is something so distasteful about treating the death of a family member like a lottery win.

Equal split, anything else would be unfair to her deceased daughter's child.

There’s so much more to his story, including the nieces having very little to do with their grandmother. When she became mentally unwell, they weren’t in the least bit interested. It was left to me and DH to cope. It was a very difficult time. It felt very much like they were money grabbing. When she died we were left to clear her bungalow. She was a hoarder, we filled three skips and the local charity shops couldn’t take any more stuff. Not once did either niece offer to help. Sorry to drip feed.

Looking back to those times, I’ve remembered how upset we both were. I cried and cried over how bleak everything was with my MIL. She was very difficult and we had to cope alone. My DH wasn’t in the best of health himself and I was recovering from ovarian cancer.

Her son sounds awful. If I was her, I’d speak to him and express my disgust. What a bastard.

I’d give granddaughter half and sons children 25% each. That way she’s given to her children equally.

Argh. Sorry for the typos.

This is awful. Your friend’s poor granddaughter. It should be an even split or half to your friend’s granddaughter and half to her son. No way should her gd miss out on her rightful share.

Absolutely equal split between each grandchild.

Sons kids have the benefit of living parents...