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.

It sounds like they aren’t, no. It sounds as though Op has a son from a previous marriage, and is concerned that son number 2 has inherited money from the family of husband number 2. Son number 1 would of course only inherit from the family of husband number 1. Both sons will presumably inherit from their mother.

Interesting posting history.

In one of OPs old posts she states she was upset that her older son's dad was considering adopting his step child. OP was upset as this would impact her older son's future inheritance.

Touché.

Pretty shit for the female blood relatives of half brother. What sexist behaviour!

Fortune can always strike our kids in different ways.

Your eldest might win the lottery and end up with far more than the younger. Either could become disabled… or marry someone with boundless wealth… etc.

Would you leave your money to a step grandchild? (Who knows!).

You could choose to leave your own part of your assets to your Dc in a compensatory way, your will is your will and doesn’t have to mirror your DH’s, but this is not your DH’s issue to solve.

It’s the consequences of having multiple fathers for your kids. Me and my siblings have three fathers between us and so I know first hand the issues. Also why I post so harshly against blended families. You’ll just have to live with it.

Late MiL’s half brother has left his entire estate to the MALE grandchildren of his siblings
WTF! Who does that in this day and age?

Meanwhile the OP might well not be protecting herself financially if she's not married to this man with rich relations.

don't you think that the mil might have left to grandchildren so that the ones with 3 and 2 siblings aren't disadvantaged? i.e....a third of her money left to a son, who has to split that between 3 kids Vs your husband who would split it between 2 kids, or if only biologically, he would have the lot to himself?

what happens when kids are left money, does it stay inaccessible until they are 18? in your position, if I had access to it, I would split it between the 2 of them. she is dead, she will never know

Could you not?

I have no idea what to do about it, but I can most definitely empathise with the OP as a mother - and I only have 1 child!

It's interesting isn't it, I think I would have felt this as well. I have a half sibling and she has two children.

She was estranged from my father and I often wondered if he would bypass us both - her because they hadn't spoken in years and me because he didn't want my mum to benefit through me and leave his money to her two kids and to my son. I think I would have been annoyed if he'd split it 3 ways rather than half to be shared between them and half to my son. But in the event he did leave it all to me and my sister didn't raise it at all - she really didn't want anything from him.

Sometimes people do weird things with their wills. I know one family where there were two daughters and one had predeceased their mother. Instead of splitting the money half and half between the living daughter and the two offspring off the sister who'd passed away, they left half the money to the living sister and the other half split between all the grandchildren. Seemed a odd way of doing things to me.

As I read it, OP has two sons who are half-brothers. The older one has a different father to the younger. It is the relatives of the father of the younger who have left the money to their nephew/grandchild but not to the father’s step son (the older child). The older child also has a father but his family are unlikely to leave his son anything (though if they win the lottery they might and would also likely ignore the younger son)

My (half) siblings will be inheriting a house worth 3m from my stepfather and I nothing as my own father owns no property and is broke. That’s just life and one must learn to accept it.

By a turn of fate my 2 dc will have vastly different fortunes. Ime you can either torture yourself with it or accept that it's not fair but is just the way the cookie has crumbled.

Yes this is the really outrageous bit. Not the fact that someone wanted to leave money to their relatives rather than someone who is only related by marriage.

I hope the boys/men agree to share with their sisters!

I’m confused why you keep using capitals to say it’s their money and to do as they please, whilst actually complaining they won’t give your son their money. And then trying to get your own husband to treat them unequally to make up for it

So your parents must have owned the property as tenants in common not joint tenants. You can change it retrospectively (i.e. if bought originally as TIC can change to JT) , but both parties must agree and I personally wouldn't if DH asked me to do this. Also, by reciprocal wills do you mean mirror wills? If so, that doesn't help because the surviving spouse can literally change their will the next day. You can have a mutual will which is binding on the surviving spouse not to change but they also have major drawbacks- for example if the surviving spouse remarries or a child becomes estranged. There's literally "no swaps back"

It also happens with offspring with the same parents when they get married.

One marries an investment banker, the other marries a teacher. One is much richer than the other. Or one wins on the lottery. As you say, it's how the cookie crumbles.

All I can say is that if you want to come to terms with it, shouting yourself into submission with CAPS is likely to backfire.

YANBU to feel sad about this, but, as you say, it was their money to do with as they wished. And they wished to leave their money to their blood descendents/immediate relatives, and that did not include your older DC, who is not related to them. TBH, I don't think you should ever have expected any different. I'm a step-child myself and I have never expected to inherit a penny from either of the step sides of my family, nor will I. When there is no expectation, there is no disappointment. I think this is YOUR issue tbh and kindly you need to get over it.

Oh that’s interesting,

I think people get to know the sort of answers they will get on mumsnet so they state that so they don't get loads of pointless "It's their money they can do what they want" answers.

If child 1 has been left money, and is under 18, then no the parents cannot simply steal half of it to give to his half brother!

Your two boys have different wider families. There’s nothing you can do about that now.

You accept that your in-laws are entitled to leave their money to whomever they wish, so what’s the point in getting uptight about it? You can’t change it. Why would they leave money to a child who has his own separate father and associated relatives?

If your eldest son’s grandfather left him money, would you expect him to also leave money to your youngest son?

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.

Which is perfectly reasonable, by the way. Have you posted about this before? The circumstances from the first inheritance sound familiar. Apologies if not you.

If "S/HE WAS ENTITLED TO DO WHAT HE WANTED WITH HIS OWN MONEY" then why do you need to come to terms with it? Personally, I don't like the idea of only leaving money to males, but in the broader scenario, your eldest isn't related to them. Your problem really is that although you say they should be entitled to do what they want with their money, you don't actually believe it. You really think they should have included your eldest. And you think that they deliberately wrote the will(s) to exclude any possibility of him inheriting anything via your husband. So basically, you don't really like your husbands family, and see their wills as a swipe against you and your eldest. There's no coming to terms with that line of thinking. You either have to let it go and accept that your eldest wasn't entitled to inherit from people, and that sometimes them's the shakes in life; or carry on resenting them, which won't change anything but will eat away at you.

I think the unreasonable person is the one who left his estate only to the male relatives, leaving the girls with nothing