Getting married next year - assets and inheritance

[user1471522295]

Hi. I wonder if anyone might be able to help. I'm getting married next year. We currently own our own houses, have the approximately the same amount of capital in each property and have a child each. Mine 16, doing GCSE's, his almost 19, finishing college, no further plan as yet. I have been on my own since child was 2, always worked.
My question is this. The plan is to sell both properties and buy one together. I will eventually come in to a large inheritance (only child, one parent), fiancee has no family left to inherit from. How do I protect my own daughters eventual inheritance? His son is lovely but it doesn't seem fair that he could potentially significantly benefit from someone who has only been in his life a short while, reducing my own child's inheritance. We obviously want it all to be fair without compromising my daughter or my fiancee. What sort of questions should i/we be asking when we take legal advice? Ideally we want each spouse to be looked after but the children to benefit slightly differently. I don't mean to sound harsh, I'm just not sure on how to go about it. Fiancee agrees so I'm not doing anything he's not aware of.
Would appreciate any thoughts. Thanks in advance.

Could your DD inherit directly while you’re alive? Or could you do something specific with it (invest in a second property?) and she inherits that alone and everything else is split? I am no expert on this at all though.

When you write your wills you can get things put into trust. So for example, you could leave a lump sum that gets invested and your fiance can have the income from the investments, but if he remarries or dies it gets passed to your child.

The solicitor who helps you draw up your wills should be able to help you with this but it might cost a bit more than a standard mirror will where everything passes to each other.

So your child is highly like to be over 18 when they inherit from your parents as the child ils 16 already. In that case and also for inheritance tax reasons there is no way your parents should leave too much to you and instead perhaps should try to leave it directly to the child or do you need or want the money yourself? I suppose you might end up having a child with your new husband ( not sure of your age) and you might want that child with your existing child also to benefit from what grandparents leave. Or that may not be likely as you may not plan more children I suppose.

Leaving that aside it might make sense for you both to hold the new house as tenants in common with your child in each case inheriting your half of the new house (with until she is 18 your child's share being held on trust unti 18 by say your parents or a sibling) but with a right for the suriviving spouse to live in the house for life or until remarriage or cohabitation even though the child owns the other half of the house.

You might want to make sure as well as wills that perhaps you have a pre nup too.

Dealing with this through wills is very easy.

What is more tricky is protecting your assets in case of divorce. If that is a concern, then this is the kind of situation where a prenup might actually be a sensible idea.

See a solicitor.
I think if you are left money in a will you can do a deed of variance which changes it and leave some or all of the inheritance to someone else .It is done before the will is enacted so non of that money at anytime becomes yours.
A solicitor can tell you more.How would your future OH feel about it.If you did do this in the future he wouldn't know that this wasn't how your parents left it anyway or simply talk to your parents.

Thank you for your replies. I didn't expect any so quickly!
There won't be any further children, we are 48/54. Both children are only children.
It sounds like its pretty straightforward to arrange through Wills and Trust so that's good! I'll also look in to tenants in common for the new property. Will also discuss with my parent the option of passing an amount directly to my daughter. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

That sounds like a good idea to leave direct to the chld although a lot of parents don't want to do that (nor do I) as one child might have no children and another four so it can end up a bit unfair but that might not apply in your case re your siblngs and as you only have one child should be very simple. The other issue for your parents may be most people dont' want people to inherit too young in case they waste the money and don't pursue a career etc so it may need to be in trust until she is 25 years but that is easily done in their will.

If you and your finance have widely different incomes the pre nup which is not binding in england but can have indicative force but it sounds like at least currently you both have the same assets and similar incomes. I think you should both consider university costs too and just be clear what you both are happy with for that stage eg I am paying my sons' fees at univesrity - most parents do not but even those who do not the child is usually only given a loan which is not enough to pay the rent even so most parents end up topping it up - this might affect both of you until the children are at least 21 but that is probably more an issue to chat about than put in the will etc.

Thanks All! I've got an idea where to start when we see a solicitor. 😊