School fees and inheritance. I have my hard hat

[barenakedhazy]

I have 3 children, currently all at Uni. My sister is child free by choice.

11 years ago my husband and I sat down and did the maths about school fees for secondary school. We had planned to send our children privately but the youngest two were
twins and while affording 2 would have been possible, 3 wasn't. We were disappointed as we'd planned for this school, but instead started looking into moving house.

When we told my dad this he made us an offer. He'd recently sold his house to downsize to a small flat in an over 50s block and he was cash rich. He offered to pay for the kids to go to school. He felt really strongly about them going and this mattered to him- more than it mattered to us frankly. To ensure their education wouldn't be disrupted he paid the school for 7 years up front for each child. This was just over £100k each.

He then changed his will stipulating that my sister would get the first £300k of any inheritance, with the remainder split between us. (Look - before people start pulling this apart it was a lot more complicated and involved- this is just a simplified summary). He felt confident this wouldn't be a problem as he owned a property he'd paid £250k for and had another £200k left after paying the school fees, as well as a good pension for day to day living.

Over the next 10 years things weren't brilliant. In summary- flat was a terrible investment which cost £50k in 5 years for leasehold repairs and eventually sold for less than he bought it. There were some mistaken investments. He helped out his sister with a loan and she then died and our cousins were dreadful and said without a legal loan agreement they wouldn't repay from her estate. Finally there was a fall that hospitalised him and left him wheelchair bound and needing full time care.

My dad died 7 months ago and after over 5 years in a care home there was almost nothing left for an inheritance.

My sister and I are joint executors and she is furious. She says I got over £300k and she got nothing. She wants £150k off my husband and I to make it "fair".

I understand she's upset and do see how it seems wrong. However we weren't going to go the private school route as we couldn't afford it- this was something that mattered to my Dad and which he did for his grandchildren. I said I see it as a gift to his grandchildren- she says she's being punished for being child free.

I was sympathetic but she's been so bloody horrible that I'm at the stage of just telling her to get lost and never speaking to her again. She's made Dad's death all about money and seems more upset that there's no inheritance than the fact that he's died. She visited rarely and had nothing to do with setting up the care home or managing the fees- I had POA and did all of that. Now she wants his accounts audited and I'm so angry at the implication that I mismanaged things.

Anyway. AIBU to tell her that she's not getting £150k off us? We do have the money as we are both in well paid jobs and she's always struggled to find her niche which I think makes things harder. She lives alone and doesn't have a lot saved for retirement which has been worrying her, so I think some of this is because she was relying on dad's money. However if she'd have bothered to get involved in his care she'd have seen the situation in real time.

Your father chose to spend money on the education of his grandchildren. This was a choice he made because he wanted them to have the same education as you and your sister. It was a gift to them, not to you. If he hadn't paid for their education they wouldn't have gone to that school. Either way, you wouldn't have been paying school fees so you'd be in the same position financially.

Your children have had a gift from him but you haven't, and neither has your sister. That's already fair.

He chose to give away money to what he considered a good cause. If it had been a cat's home, the fairness issue would not have arisen. It only arises now because your sister mistakenly thinks you've had a benefit that she hasn't.

Your different financial positions now come from your decisions and attitudes in the past, not from anything your father did. By all means give something to your sister if you want to help her out, but don't do it out of a sense of obligation when you absolutely don't have any.

I can completely understand your instinct to want to give your children the best start in life and help them with house deposits.

However, I think morally you are in the wrong. Although you say your children would not have gone to private school if your dad hadn't paid, you and your husband made a financial decision at the time to accept the money in place of the £300,000 in his will. That was a decision which showed that that gift WAS of that much value to you at the time.

Your sister hasn't been given the chance to make any decisions at all, and as POA you should really have discussed the fact that there was due to be nothing left for her far earlier on and been thinking yourself about how unfair this was knowing that you'd taken £300,000 from your dad, when you could have just taken the £100,000 that you were not able to afford.

I understand your emotions are saying keep the money for your own children, but morality and fairness says that you should give £150,000 to your sister.

Don't give anything to your sis. Anything less than 300k won't be enough for her and she would still moan at that.

If all the money had gone before your father died and he was not paying for his care privately, then, had it not already been spent on school fees, that £300k would have been tapped into to pay for his care.

So, if you are tempted to give her anything (and I’m on the fence, as I am in similar position with a non-involved sibling, while I do everything for my elderly parent and I know the mental, emotional and physical cost of that) then first, you’d need to work out what would have been left of that £300k to inherit and give he half of that.

He has treated his children equally - both received nothing. He chose with his money to pay for his grandchildren to have the same education he paid for both his daughters. His money his choice.

You cannot give her your husbands money or inheritance. If he hadn’t gifted the money, would it be left now to split, or would that to have been gazumped by fees, in which case she would still have received nothing and it’s all irrelevant!

He promised your sister the first 300k. Not 300k. It was always a possibility that there wouldn't be 300k left in his estate, especially if he was investing or needing care. If he had wanted to guarantee her money, he could have given it to her at the time.

He wanted your children to attend the school you did. It's not like he bought you a house or something where there is a tangible asset you can now split. Inheritance is not a given and people should not rely on it as a retirement plan.

It's unfortunate, but that is what he wanted and you haven't planned financially to give your sister money. Why would you have. Your father's estate planning is not your business and if he had said "I'll pay school fees, but you need to pay them back to my estate for your sister" then you would have declined as you had decided you couldn't afford them.

Grief, money, siblings. Possibly one of the mose toxic combinations there is.

Too late now but all this should have been equal.

This! Neither daughter got an inheritance at death!

Do the right thing OP. Give your sister the money - it’s outrageously unfair for you to even think about withholding it when your family has benefited so much

You should give her something.
your kids have benefited from private education, uni and you want to give them
house deposits - I get that, but surely you can see that your family have benefited from your dads money and another separate inheritance you mentioned!

personally I’d offer some money.

What the hell did I just read? Are you seriously saying that people who went to private school are better and more responsible than people who didn't????

I hate it when people see grandchildren as just offcuts of their parents.

I had this conversation with my mum the other day who said she would leave £5 grand to share between the children of each child so it doesn’t disadvantage my brother with one child over us with two. As if money going to my children was money for me? And as if she didn’t have her OWN relationship with my children?

They are their own separate people. They had their own relationship with your dad. He decided to invest in them.

The £300k has gone. You do not owe your sister anything. If it hadn’t been spent on school fees it may have gone on other poor investments or loans. Your dad could have remarried or given it to charity or passed it on to your children.

A lot of people are promised an inheritance but then people live longer that they anticipated or become unwell and the money gets spent. It’s what happened with my PIL (we were promised a house worth £1m) who spent the money on living and care homes but we always knew we had to rely on ourselves alone. For context my eldest brother in law had been gifted the family estate when my PIL were in their 50s and FIL became unwell. So that’s uneven too. We didn’t go and demand our money from BIL. It’s ridiculous.

It’s sad that your sister counted on this inheritance, but you are not responsible for your sister’s poor life choices.

Her sister got nothing. OP has had £300k from her Dad for school fees. And OP can afford to give her sister £150 k. But she doesn't want to. Typical of some folk. Overkeen to accept money from others but their own purse remains tightly shut. It was her Dads intention to treat his children equally.

You benefitted by 300k and your sister got nothing.

If you give her 150k you're still 150k up and that's fair.

Surely one of the main reasons you have so much in savings is precisely because your dad paid the school fees. I’m on your sister’s side on this one. Legally you don’t owe her anything, but morally you do.

It was father's decision to pay for grandkids education. I do not believe there is an obligation on you to change that. I honestly can't understand why people expect and believe they have a right to an inheritance. It really scares me - should I start counting how much I spent on each child so they do not have to fight over this later on? What if one's child school or extracurriculars are more expensive than the other's? How much help they get with uni costs? Where does it end? In my mind I plan to help each child (if I am in a position to help) when they need it and based on what my situation is at that time. Whatever spent during the lifetime is a gift and not inheritance.
So I do not believe there is any obligation on you to pay anything. And I would be very upset I did not do my job properly in raising them, if any of my children, like your sister, felt they have a right to my money.

No. He invested in the children whom he had his own relationship with. OP didn’t gain any more than the sister did. They had to buy their own house, their own cars, their own living. The children benefitted.

I agree with her.
SIL was given money for a house deposit from PiL and DH was given nothing. They said they would alter their will to make it equal when they died (30 years later!). They didn't.
The hurt and injustice is real.

You are getting a hard time on here OP and I honestly think it is unfair.

Your dad, made a choice while still living to gift your children an education of private school, something you were not going to do but agreed to at his persistance.

I am sure your dad will have known at the time that any future inheritance could never be guaranteed. Would your dad really want you to empty your bank account and give it to your sister? I know neither of my parent's would have expected me or my siblings to have done this.

Also if either of my parents had gifted my siblings children a significant amount of money while still alive and had nothing left in their will to inherit, no way would I be hounding my sibling for any saved money. I honestly would be happy that my parents got to see their grandchildren lead the lives both parents and grandparent had wished them to lead. Pretty sure my siblings would also feel the same.

Inheritance is never guaranteed, money left in a will can never be guaranteed when care has been involved and again I would just be happy that my parent got the care they needed at the end.

I say keep your money saved in your bank, your sister however upset she maybe will just have to come to terms with it in her own way.

It was extremely naive for all parties concerned to think that care home / end of life costs would not take a huge bite out of any inheritance pot. It sounds like the relationship with your sister is damaged beyond repair. If you acquiesce to her demand of money you would probably never see her again or be very low contact. It was a bit of a cock up by your dad to try and divide his estate by living and post death installments but there is not much to do about it now.

@Beautifulbythebay He also wanted the sister, his other DD, to get £300,000.

Tbh I think the correct position is to give her £100k. You would have paid for 2kids so you have directly benefitted by keeping the £200k you would have spent but for the gift.

She wasn't going to send them to private school in the end as they couldn't afford it - it's in several of her updates.