One child has inherited AGAIN

[EWAB]

A decade ago my younger son benefited from a massive inheritance.

Essentially my MiL bypassed her three children and left everything to her 6 grandchildren.

The grandchildren: 2 siblings, 3 siblings and my younger child.

SHE WAS ENTITLED TO DO AS SHE PLEASED. IT WAS HER MONEY.

The fallout was quite seismic for lots of reasons. My partner felt that as he only had one child the family of the brother with 3 children benefitted disproportionately.

It was said at the time and I believe this to be the case that the will was designed like this. to stop my elder child from a previous relationship from benefiting as he might have done 40/50 years later if the money had gone directly to my partner.

As for my relationship, my partner refused to consider changing our wills leaving more to elder child who was at the time very unlikely to inherit from his own father. He is now on property ladder but any inheritance will pale into insignificance compared with younger child’s

Well it’s happened again!

Late MiL’s half brother has left his entire estate to the MALE grandchildren of his siblings. Younger son and partner’s nephew and we think 2 or 3 others.

HE WAS ENTITLED TO DO WHAT HE WANTED WITH HIS OWN MONEY.

I genuinely can’t contemplate my two sons having such vastly different lives.

I want advice to come to terms with it . I have disabled voting. I can’t talk to anyone.

Apparently, it's a sequel. I must go back and read the earlier ones, lol

There’s a whole back catalogue! Enjoy

This is nonsensical. OP or anyone else criticising the decision on sexist grounds would be the opposite of justifying it.

Requiring a woman to criticise a male’s decision that benefitted other males and into which she had zero input IS sexist.

Which isn't what you said.

It's also wrong. Nobody can require anything. The OP has told us what she thinks of the decision, and this didn't include any criticism of the sexism. She has full and total input into her own posts.

This is disingenuous. Requiring women to justify or criticise men’s actions is sexist, you know it which is why you’re splitting hairs.

She had no input into the uncle’s will.

Tbh I don’t understand your post either 😊 Are you being ironic about a lump of coal? I do hope so. And I wasn’t saying anyone should ‘expect’ anything. They are dealing with the situation as it is. The elder son is getting zilch, nada, nothing (not even a piece of coal..or 5k…), from his putative ‘stepfather’s’ estate/relatives. It is what it is, whatever anybody did or didn’t expect, and it is blatantly dismissive of his feelings/position. He’s been a part of their family for twenty years, and is the brother of their biological son/grandson/great nephew. It is grossly neglectful and disrespectful of their natural son’s/grandson’s mother too. All because of money. ‘The root of all evil’. So you got 5k…and are happy with it (not so much the lump of coal?). How old were you when your dad got together with your stepmum incidentally? Were you pre-school, so effectively raised by her? Some could argue you have been treated unfairly, whatever your expectations, and two wrongs don’t make a right, whatever your personal situation. It’s like saying ‘I was smacked as a child and what’s good enough for me is good enough for everyone else.’ ie…a non sequitur.

To be fair to the OP, she did say that her MIL and her MIL's half brother were entitled to do what they wanted with their money. However, I do feel there was an element of disappointment for her in how they dealt with things, and also with her DP refusing to change his will to more accommodate her DS1.

I think her main concern going forth, and the point of her current post is that she feels that her DS1 will have a vastly different life to his younger brother. She stated that she is very upset by this and her words were, "I want advice to come to terms with it."

So really, although she is not happy about it, it actually does seem like she has accepted it and perhaps just wants words of encouragement.

I just think it is what it is, but I'm not sure that's very encouraging for her to hear.

I was making a clear comparison about how step children should and should not be treatment. For example, I said it would be wrong to sit in a room as a family and give the biological children gifts and nothing (the ‘lump of coal’ which people talk about giving to naughty children hence why I used that example) to the step children. Most blended families operate in this way, they treat the children together as one family on a day to day. Personally, I don’t think it’s wrong to not give inheritance to adult stepchildren.

As it happens, yes I lived in a proper blended family. Did you?

I do not feel I was treated unfairly. My half siblings and I (I have a full biological sister too) all have 1 mum and 1 dad. The stepparents are part and parcel of life but they’re not the same as biological parents. I may inherit from my mum one day or I may not if she needs it for care.

Step families operate in various ways and expecting grandparents to automatically consider them in their wills is bonkers to me. My dad chose to re marry and my stepmum chose a man with children, her parents (very nice people) did not choose to blend the family. I wouldn’t expect my half siblings to have less inheritance from their maternal family knowing I will probably inherit from my maternal family.

Nicely put. 😊 And clearer. The coal had muddied communication a little

It's not disingenuous to correct you when you're wrong.

What's being commented on is a decision OP had full input into, which is her post on the the will. Nobody thinks OP had any control over the will itself, so that's a strawman. It might be sexist if DP came on here, also ignored that and people didn't point out or justified what he was doing whilst not doing the same for OP. That isn't what happened.

You’re criticising OP for not criticising a man’s decision she had nothing to do with. That is inherently sexist. The rest of your post is waffle.

This is Mumsnet, women are still allowed to express their own upset at their children getting such different outcomes in life; without being jumped on or blamed.

💯

When someone is continuously fighting a losing battle, and actively making their situation and that of their child worse, then yes, winding their neck in is probably a wise of course of action.

The two siblings have different realities that reflect their different family relationships. That’s a choice OP made for them. If she didn’t like it then it was on her to leave, not try and force those around her to give her what she wanted. The MIL and the uncle neither created this problem, nor were obliged to solve it.

And no, he isn’t ‘their’ child - he’s the child of his mother and father (the latter of which was and is active in his life, incidentally).

As far as the males - only will goes, that was his money and his business 🤷🏻‍♀️ no one has been denied anything rightfully theirs.

You don't appear to understand the meaning of the words you're throwing about here. Thus far we've had incorrect usage of requiring, justifying, disingenuous and sexism. One wonders what you're going to come up with next in order to avoid admitting that you're wrong.

Instead of attacking people for pointing out your sexism, perhaps consider your own instincts and motivations and why you expect more from OP who is a woman, than the man who actually wrote the sexist will.

Correcting you is not attacking you.

You have used multiple words wrongly, and now resorted to outright invention. I've criticised the late uncle multiple times on this thread. You just saw something you didn't like and decided to wade in without thinking or checking.

Maybe have a think about your own instincts and motivations, that are leading you to continue digging this hole.

More like.

Recognizing and pointing out that this situation has occurred because of choices OP made is not ‘blaming’ her. She did nothing wrong there. Where she went wrong was in refusing to accept reality, expecting her in laws to provide her son with what she wanted him to have, and trying to force them to.

The more you post the more your attitudes and behaviours are revealed. Your imaginary corrections and your misplaced sense of superiority are apparent for all to see.

You don't understand the terms you're using. That's not going away. Words have meanings (misplaced is another one) and they aren't just things to fire out because you saw something you didn't like.

Which terms have been misused?

I think you don’t like being called on your sexism, whether it’s conscious or unconscious.

I've used the Cambridge definitions here for ease, but if you have a strong preference for another we can be flexible.

Justify means to give or be a good reason for. When I said it was interesting that OP hadn't criticised the sexism, you said that would be requiring a woman to justify a man's decision. When actually, it was about OP doing the opposite of that. This is something you got wrong right at the start, and your subsequent mistakes flowed from there.

You then said pointing this error out to you was disingenuous. That means slightly dishonest. It's obviously not dishonest to rely on the dictionary definition of a word someone else picked. What dictionaries say is a fact.

You then felt the need to point out that she had no input into the uncle's will, which I suppose is at least right, but irrelevant. Nobody thinks she did. It was a strawman.

These incorrect conclusions led you to make a claim about sexism, which generally means treating women worse than men in some way (some argue it can work both ways too, but we don't need to consider that here). Your basis for the claim was an incorrect belief that a higher standard is being expected from the woman than the man. This clearly isn't true because there've been multiple criticisms of the man already, more than of OP on that specific point. It's simply wrong.

Justify means to give or be a good reason for. When I said it was interesting that OP hadn't criticised the sexism, you said that would be requiring a woman to justify a man's decision. When actually, it was about OP doing the opposite of that. This is something you got wrong right at the start, and your subsequent mistakes flowed from there.

But OP may choose to justify or criticise the decision to leave the money to nephews only. We are not privy to uncle’s motivations. I think he was sexist but l but I don’t know this. I guess I could have used justify or criticise, but I didn’t think anyone would be pedantic enough to decide what OP’s view should be and the terms she should use to discuss it here.

You then said pointing this error out to you was disingenuous. That means slightly dishonest. It's obviously not dishonest to rely on the dictionary definition of a word someone else picked. What dictionaries say is a fact.

I think you were disingenuous because rather than answer the point about sexism, you fixated on the terms justify vs criticise.

These incorrect conclusions led you to make a claim about sexism, which generally means treating women worse than men in some way (some argue it can work both ways too, but we don't need to consider that here). Your basis for the claim was an incorrect belief that a higher standard is being expected from the woman than the man. This clearly isn't true because there've been multiple criticisms of the man already, more than of OP on that specific point. It's simply wrong.

Of course the uncle was criticised by posters. What you were doing was holding OP to higher standards by complaining she hasn’t rejected the sexism displayed by her H’s uncle. Even though it was nothing to do with her.

Someone wave the white flag pleeeese!!