Blended family & Inheritance. How the hell do we make it fair?

[WeWereDoingSoWell]

Me and DH have been married for 5 years, together for 12. We have 5 children between us. I will try to make this as simple as possible whilst including all the relevant information.

I have three children from previous relationships. He has one child from a previous relationship. We have one child together.

DD1 : her dad is involved and she will probably get a small inheritance from him. She was older when I got with my DH and doesn't really view him as a father figure

Dd2 & dd3 : they have the same dad (not my DH) he is not involved, is in prison and they won't get any inheritance from him. They were young when I got with my DH and they think of him as their Dad.

DHs daughter : her Mam is involved and she will get inheritance from her (not a massive inheritance but likely to be bigger than DD1s inheritance from her father)

DD4 : mine and DHs daughter together.

How do we make our will fair? Would you just split it 5 ways or do we make allowances for the fact dd2, 3 and 4 won't have any inheritance from anyone else but DD1 and SD will?

Do we split our inheritance in two (mine and his) and then split it between our children? So mine would be split 4 ways and his 2?

Hopefully this won't be an issue for a long time yet but I don't want to leave things until we're old and the kids will all want to have their own opinions.

Any advice welcome

"Do we split our inheritance in two (mine and his) and then split it between our children? So mine would be split 4 ways and his 2?". yes, this

Personally I think split it evenly between the kids. There's no guarantees that the other inheritance will come through. Given you are married, whoever goes first would automatically get everything at that point anyway, then shared between all the kids once they go

I'm not from a blended family but my husband is likely to receive a lot of inheritance. I would be very unhappy if my own parents left me less, for that reason.

Does he think of your 2nd and third child as his as well?

You divide it in half. Then you each split it between your own children.

You split your share between your 4 children.

Your DH splits his share between his 2 children.

I don’t think his actual daughter’s should lose out on inheritance from him because your other children wouldn’t receive from elsewhere. There is never a guarantee of another inheritance.
His two daughter’s should be left the exact same from his estate, how your daughter’s are treated is then another question. They would get money from ‘your’ half, and if your DH feels like their father then it might be an even 5 way split.
Certainly don’t be “making up” for other people in your children’s lives.

None of those theoretical inheritances are guaranteed - any of them could vanish into care fees or poor investments, or the child be cut out of the will!

The only thing to take into account is what you can leave your children and that’s for the two of you to decide as individuals.

You need to be careful how any wills are written as there are hundreds of cases where a partner inherits everything from their partner and is supposed to include their deceased partner’s children in their will and doesn’t. Try to protect your children’s interests as much as possible.

Yes, we have talked about him adopting them

Well this is true for all of them in that case, none of them are guaranteed inheritance so would it not make sense for us to divide it equally?

That would depend on how your husband feels, three of them are not his children.

Does that mean 4 children get 1/6th each and the shared child gets 2/6ths?

I don't know how you can make it fair - dividing it out equally seems logical to me, but I am not from a blended family so can't understand all the potential emotional dynamics.

How does your DH feel?
Are you both bringing equal assets to the table?
How long have you been together?

Why? The "actual" daughters benefit from an unbroken family unit

Yes we're fairly equal in assets, I probably have slightly more but it's negligible. We've been together 12 years.

This is the only fair way.
My in-laws left nothing to dh (only child)as they had nothing to leave.
My sister’s in-laws left a decent amount to her dh.
My parents quite rightly split 50/50 between. Me and my sister-they didn’t leave me more because my sister and her dh inherited from his parents.
its the same principle

You are unlikely to die at the exact same moment so split it 5 ways. If you have a will that says your estate goes to 4 of the children and he dies shortly before you his child gets nothing unless you have time to alter your will in the meantime.

This seems like a good way to turn all the other kids (especially your DDs who view him as their dad) against the youngest tbh.

For me, given the complexity of the parental roles, the fairest way for all children (and the way least likely to leave carnage in the wake of your deaths) would be an equal 5 way split.

If you split it between you and DH and then between each of your respective DCs, the youngest gets disproportionately more than everyone and the DDs who consider him a father get nothing from him. A legacy of feeling like they didn’t matter to him doesn’t sound ideal.

What does he think about it?

If your husband thinks of your two daughters as his, and is considering adopting, then you effectively have three shared children and two children who are not shared. In these circumstances I think it would make sense just to split between 5 equally. As otherwise one of the two non shared children may lose out depending on who died first

Doesn't really matter. This is Mumsnet. People's wills are just there to be disregarded, fought over and redistributed to make everything "fair" and "kind" regardless of what the deceased person actually wanted to happen.

Sorry, I realise that doesn't help you OP, but the posts about inheritances on here are usually wild.

Hope you can come to an arrangement that you are both happy with.

What’s yours goes to your children and what’s his goes to his children.

It’s really that simple.

We are a blended family but less complicated than your set up. I have one DS father involved and worth millions. DP has a daughter with involved mother, will likely get very little if any inheritance.
We have split our assets and mine go to my DS and his go to his DD (not married but own a house and have shared bank accounts). The fact that my DS father is very wealthy has no bearing on what I will give to him versus step DD. We are very close to each others children, treat them as our own in most other ways, but the financial differences are through luck of birth unfortunately and there are differences throughout their lives that we will never be able to balance.
In your case I would give your share to your DC and he should give his share to his DC. If he adopts DC 2 and 3 that would change things and he should also split his half between the 4 DC that he is legally parent to.

Divide it equally.

His money is split between his children, yours is split between yours. Whoever dies first leaves a lifetime interest in the family home to the other, but it’s still split as per the first sentence.

If both of you are happy, I would split 5 ways.

Ordinarily I would say each parent in a blended family passes on to their children their own share of the assets, but I think in your case the outcome wouldn't be vastly different.

Other inheritances aren't relevant tbh, as no inheritance is guaranteed in any event.