Wealthy MIL hoarding money

[hoardingwealth]

MIL is worth a few Million. Lives in a 6 bed, 6 bath mansion. Has multiple cars. Takes several long haul holidays every year, always business class. Lots of investments. Lots and lots of properties that she rents out. She's in very good health and in her mid 70's. Most women in the family live until 95. I'd say she's on track to do the same.

Now here's the rub. She was given a property and a business by her wealthy parents. She also inherited substantially. But she has effectively pulled up the ladder behind her, and has not given any such help to DH or his brother. We are ok for money, however BIL is on the breadline. He has young kids too. They are crammed into a tiny ex-council house and live pay cheque to pay cheque. They have no treats or niceties, no meals out, no holidays etc, as the money just won't stretch.

Obviously when MIL passes, unless she needs care, DH and BIL will receive a very nice inheritance, but if she does indeed live until 95, DH and BIL will be in their early 70's by then.

How would you feel about this? I'm struggling to wrap my head around it, tbh. DH and I have adult children, and we have helped them financially to get on the housing ladder, to get married etc, even though we don't have anything near this kind of wealth.

AIBU to think that MIL should have done the same as her parents did for her, and given DH and BIL a leg up, just like she had?

Has anyone else experienced this?

TBF in my area there is a big difference between the quality of council funded care and the quality of what an ample residential care budget will get you. I don’t see why MIL should have to open herself to the possibility of finishing out her life in - at best - very dreary circs to help her DC now.

We don’t have the information to determine whether it would come to that. OP hasn’t actually provided a lot of detail on MIL’s likely complex finances.

One possibility is, if some of the properties she rents out are residential and owned free and clear - those are two big unknowns - then as @Ponoka7 and possibly others mentioned, MIL might consider letting her struggling DS have one at an affordable rent. Again, we don’t know.

Yes I think that was what I mentioned by balance. I have no issue with funding qualifications or supporting DC or DGC with a housing deposit, but I am much more reluctant to fund day to day spending, holidays etc.

Your DH had the same education and the same upbringing and is sufficiently well-off to give financial assistance to his own children. So it is possible that your MIL has rather harshly concluded that your BIL's current financial situation is a result of his own accumulated life choices, and that giving him a bail-out might help short term but actually be quite unhelpful long-term? e.g. if she gives him some cash now and he moves to a bigger property - he might not be able to afford the higher council tax, bills and maintenance costs of a larger property and get into debt trying to keep it all going. Or she might be worried that he'd waste it, or invest it unwisely.

You would rather leave it to a dog shelter than your own children who you see live in poverty? Well shame on you is all I can say.

Could you post a link to a thread where anyone has ever said that grandparents should “give all their money to their kids” and/or look “after their grandkids full time”.

You remind me of the father of a pp who mentioned that he often goes on rants about adult children who expect handouts or free childcare. He doesn’t even have grandchildren. The pp asked him who on earth he was talking about and he had no answer.

So, to echo that pp. Who are you even talking about?

A link to one thread, please.

I’m going to get shot for this one, but half a million in cash is not that much when you get older. Fear is usually what makes people keep it. All the houses are trapped by tax (CGT and IHT if you die). I suspect her idea of wealth and yours are misaligned.

That said, I’d also help my kids unless there is a back story.

But on the flip if my parents have lots of money I wouldn’t think any less of them for not giving me handouts

Leap of a thousand miles there.

When you raise your children, do you see them go without (obviously within the bounds of your own finances?) Of course we expect adults to be able to help themselves more but what harm is helping out going to cause?

Spending money can be the natural exercise of love. I buy my niece presents, which demonstrates that I care. I spent money. That help that gift, in turn sponsors affection. It's the transfer of energy.

Society is based on capitalism, you need money to help.

I love how it's 'omg, expecting financial help is grabby and selfish', in a hyper capitalist society where something like 4% own and yes, hoard, the majority of wealth. But people complain about the former inequality, whilst several rungs down, declare it is good to keep all your money to yourself, whilst watching your OWN family suffer.

And yet OP says MIL and BIL have a nice relationship, no fallings out or anything weird. So if he is happy why is it a problem for OP? It’s non of her business

All the folk saying it’s her money. You will all happily watch your children struggle, or even if they’re not struggling, you’ll not gift them anything?

Because by saying it’s her money to do with as she will, you’re saying you agree with MIL?

OP it’s weird and tight and she’s clearly not very close to her sons.

@DimeADozen the thing is it’s their choice. My DP’s are handing stuff down now to me so it escapes Reeves’s clutches but that is their choice because they know that myself and DSiblings are not grabby arseholes. It’s about attitude. Maybe get they think you don’t get yourselves out of the minimum wage jobs because you are relying on their hand outs. Not fair maybe but if they built themselves up and gave your DH help in other ways understandable. I run a business that’s moderately successful and one of my siblings is so successful it’s outing if I even indicated in what … but it’s private sector and down to his work ethic. My DPs therefore know that whilst what they do is nice, it’s not our mentality.

@hoardingwealth oh and half a million is nothing in old age. I have more than double that in 1 ISA which is money that counts specifically to our retirement.

@Beyondamountainandoverthesea no I can perfectly understand @UniquePinkSwan . It’s about attitude. If you think you are due something you’ll never make any effort yourself. I wouldn’t do charity but i would absolutely pass them by and go straight to the grandkids or put the money in a trust to benefit grandkids

Handouts?

You seriously consider making sure your grandchildren get to experience at least one holiday in their childhoods, or don’t have to wear second hand clothing, is giving handouts?

They are her grandchildren, not homeless addicts on the street. And she is a wealthy woman.

I wouldn’t judge anyone wealthy for not giving their child money, if their child didn’t need it.

But if their child was living pay check to pay check, their grandchildren wearing second hand clothes, they had never experienced a holiday, they lived in inadequate housing and attended local shit schools, then yes, I would very much be thinking less of that person. Most people would think less of that person.

Inheritance is such a fraught subject. My great aunt left all her worldly goods (including a house she inherited from my great-grandmother) to a charity. My father was written out of his mother's will (but she was a terrible person and had form so it was hardly surprising).

Personally given my university education was free (and I got a grant) and our first home (3 bed detached) was bought for just £60,000 I'd feel morally obliged to help out my children when the time comes. But not everyone is built like me.

She actually sounds a selfish bitter old woman, you say she owns lots of rental properties, she could let the BIL have one of those rent free, iam she one properties rent would be a drop in the ocean.
Ism completely on your side re all this, she lavishes her scrounging boyfriend yet gives her struggling son nothing, she ought to be ashamed of herself.
Next time she's bragging about money on holidays,just gray rock her

She can....but personally I could not sleep at night knowing my child was on the breadline while I had an overabundance. ...I would feel like a selfish cow.....I guess we're all different

My DM, now in her 80s, grew up in penury. Too many mouths to feed, not enough money to feed them. Bread was rationed, milk was watered down, eggs went to the boys only, oranges were a rare annual treat.

She and my DF are multimillionaires. She’s now the MN’s proverbial “rich person who’s tighter than a gnat’s arse”. Her kitchen cupboards are stuff with food, she can never throw food away, she’s morbidly obese, she’s forever foisting food on people. Even now, she cries remembering her childhood and the lengths her DM had to go to to make sure she and her siblings were fed, and the hard life her DM suffered.

She and DF are incredibly generous with their children and grandchildren, so your scenario is different to mine. But with anyone outside of this tiny subset, she’s unbelievably and shamefully and embarrassingly tight. Partly it’s that she’s stuck in 1990s prices, partly it’s that a mindset developed through childhood can last for the rest of a person’s life. She still struggles with the mentality of money running out. It’s highly emotive for her. So she will help her dependents but she will hoard everything from everyone else. No matter how many times we’ve pointed out that she doesn’t need to think this way, that it’s wrong to think this way, that it’s highly insulting to treat people this way - she can’t shake it off. “You never know what the future holds”, she says. She never wants to risk going back to where she came from, she says. Perhaps your MIL feels the same way.

It's her money stop with expectations. Leave her he.

Can you arrange for your DH to speak with his mum and suggest his DB could do with some financial help? If she has recently inherited money she could draft a deed of variance, passing on the funds, so they don't become part of her estate. However, It could be that she is just mean and doesn't intend to help any of her children and they may also be excluded from her will, in favour of her partner.

MIL's estate is going to be in line for a huge inheritance tax bill at 40%. Get her sons to ask her if she'd be happy with that. Ask her if she'd like to talk to a financial advisor in order to mitigate those tax liabilities.

Some people are just born nasty ! I could never do this to my kids but I know someone in a very similar distinction to your mil and she never gave anything to her 3 children , including one that is disabled from birth and works but could certainly do with living in a better area . Hopefully one day at lest you will be able to help yours with her wealth

People who have never had to really struggle are usually especially possessive of their money and live in a convoluted fantasy in which they somehow actually earned it. It tends to be people who have really had to struggle and go without who take pleasure in helping out others and paying forward their good fortune.

I think the concept of it being "transactional" goes both ways... why would you go out of your way to take care of someone who has spent the preceding decades showing you that they don't give a shit how much hardship and suffering you have to endure?

Why does that matter to MIL? She won’t be the one paying it