Grandparents and adopted grandchildren

[ChorltonCreamery]

A grandparent has died and their will leaves everything to their grandchildren.

The grandchildren will receive unequal amounts as the estate is divided proportionally e.g. Divided into quarters. So a grandchild without siblings will get a quarter and grandchildren with siblings will share a quarter with their siblings.

The grandchildren are named individually- the named grandchildren are all biological grandchildren.

However one of the deceased’s children has two adopted children with their second wife. One of the adopted grandchildren was initially a step-child and the other grandchild was adopted from abroad.

The adopted grandchildren were not mentioned in the will.

He is pressuring his biological daughter to share with her adopted half-siblings. She refuses. He has now appealed to his nephew and nieces and again they are refusing.

The adopted children are still children.

One of the biological grandchildren is 16 (not the daughter of the son who is annoyed) but the others are all adults.

Can the son challenge the will on behalf of the adopted children who were adopted before the will was made?

In England. Estate is roughly 3 million pounds with the house included.

Also the way the will has been written to leave things proportionally, as it would have if they'd left it to their children rather than grandchildren, is another thing that clearly suggests it was written specifically to exclude the adopted grandchildren from inheriting now or later.

The grandparent clearly saw their granddaughter as the only grandchild from their son.

Difficult for him, but pressing his daughter and nieces/nephews is entirely wrong.

I believe in england the will can be challenged, & rewritten IF ALL ‘parties’, agree.

If all beneficiaries agree, and are of age and position to do so, they can do a deed of variation.

Challenging the will is different and goes through court (and very rarely succeeds).

I speak as the mother of an adopted child and think all the grandchildren, including adopted, should have received the same set amount each. This is what's happened in my family. I don't really think there's much you can do if the sibling of the adopted children doesn't want to share her portion of the inheritance with them.

I think this can only be addressed in the next generation, let the two adopted children share the first £1.5m of their parent's estate (maybe index linked - and clearly many people don't have that much) and then three ways beyond that. You may be able to persuade the daughter to give them £50k each which would be a massive help towards a deposit, with it made up from the parent's estate?

The stepson has been legally adopted, I think he is in secondary school, the little girl is much younger. I don’t know what their relationship was like with the deceased.

I don’t think the individual inheritance is as much as £750,000 but definitely over half a million. The house has not been sold yet.

My cousin’s ex has visited her to talk about it. She had previously been contacted by her former sister-in-law to tell her what his attitude was.

She was just after a legal position but her daughter is an adult.

It’s such a weird way to have done it. Either leave it to your children and it’s up to them to pass any on to their own children. Or skip a generation and leave an equal amount to each grandchild. Penalising grandchildren for having siblings so getting less is very odd and leaving out the grandchildren by adoption is hurtful but must be for a reason. Bizarre legacy to want for yourself.

I think a lot depends on the relationships.

My ex-PIL's have never met my exes step-children, who i believe he is in the process of adopting. My daughters have never met them, or his wife, and haven't seen their father for several years. Neither have his other children from the relationship after me. In that situation I wouldn't be surprised if my ex-IL's don't include him or them, and he absolutely is the type to kick off and insist on them being included.

We have recently taken in a 3yo member of my family and I wouldn't be remotely surprised if my MIL does include him because she already calls herself Granny, she includes him in when she's talking about "the kids" and she's likely to have a very close relationship with him as she lives with us.

I understood that when a child is legally adopted it brings all the same legal rights and entitlements as a biological child with respect to inheritance.

I think, therefore, they would have grounds to appeal if the term ‘my grandchildren’ was used, but perhaps not if the wording states to ‘Billy and Bob, Annie and April, my grandchildren’.

They should seek legal advice as the intention of the will seems to be to allocate via each of the deceased’s children and, in law, the adopted children ARE legally recognised as equal to the biological children.

Seriously shitty thing to do. DH and I are in the process of considering our wills and as my DD is lesbian, we have made sure to state that we are leaving initially to our own children and then to any of their children - adopted or biological - to make sure there is clarity.

Everyone seems to be assuming that the will deliberately left out the adopted children because it was written after both children had been adopted, but I don’t think the original post specifically says that, does it? (Not that it would make any difference legally, as far as I know.)

I can sort of understand leaving out the stepchild as presumably they already have, or had, two other lots of grandparents. Not pleasant for the adoptee from abroad, but it was the grandparent's choice to do what she wanted with her money (assuming she knew about the two "extras") and unfair to put pressure on any of the beneficiaries to change this.

It's quite unusual, but it's clearly been done to very specifically exclude the adopted children.

I wonder if they were advised that an equal amount to all grandchildren could be more challengeable?

Whereas this is basically giving the children what would have been their parents share.

The cousins all seem to be close to one another and had a close relationship with their grandparents. None of them have an issue with the different amounts, just seeing it as inheriting their individual parents’ inheritance instead of their parents.

My cousin did say to her ex that if he tried to disadvantage their daughter in his will his daughter would see it as a rejection and she hoped he wouldn’t do that.

The ex has definitely adopted legally his stepson, that is not disputed.

Do you actually know when the will was written? Was it definitely after the children were adopted?

Will was definitely written AFTER both adoptions.

Grandchildren are named individually.

Yes, I think it’s that. She didn’t want to leave money to the adopted ones which is her choice. I would hope it can’t be challenged as these were her wishes. The son who is asking his bio daughter and her cousins to share is a cheeky fucker.

If grandchildren are named individually then that is who it goes to.

My cousin did say to her ex that if he tried to disadvantage their daughter in his will his daughter would see it as a rejection and she hoped he wouldn’t do that.

They shouldn't be emotionally blackmailing him like that. As far as he's concerned 'his' share of his mother's estate has been handed over to only one of his three children, so it would be entirely understandable for him to want to make up for that at some point. The little ones don't need it now because they're dependent children, but later on he might want to help them - and his eldest won't need the same help, because of the massive boost she's already had (plus any expectations from her mother).

Or, of course, he'll leave it all to her stepmother anyway....

They have been deliberately excluded. They shouldn’t have been - both in terms of “fairness” and being treated equally with other dgc and in terms of effectively excluding them - it’s less challangable if the will says “I gift my son’s adopted children, Bill and Ben Bloggs, the sum of five pounds each. The remainder of my estate is to be divided between my grandchildren as follows. 25% to Alice, 25% to Barbara, 12.5% to Clare, 12.5% to Dora and 6.25% each to Elizabeth, Felicity, Georgia and Harriet.” Then nobody can claim it’s an oversight.

The GM excluded them. Rightly or wronglynit was her wish she wanted biological GC to inherit.

The daughter is 100% right.
It's her inheritance. Her dad doesn't get to decide how to divy up a pie that isnt his.

The dad is a dickhead. He can even it up in his will if he feels so strongly and if I was the DD I'd tell him this.

Youve called them half siblings but then said one was a stepchild and one adopted from abroad. So not blood relatives of the grandparent. Still shitty treatment though.

I'd advise he talks to a lawyer specialising in inheritance to understand the chance of success with pursuing a challenge on behalf of the adopted kids in court but it would be forcing his bio daughter's inheritance to be divided in 3 and she may come to hate him for that.

Alternately I'd suggest the parents divide their estate between the 2 adopted children but tell their daughter that that's what they are doing and why. Her father has not inherited from his parent because it went to her and she in turn will not inherit from him because she has already had his share. She might have her nose put out of joint at that thought, because it will feel weird and unfair but she cannot honestly expect to come out on top twice at her adopted siblings' expense. She is lucky to get such a lot of money so early on whereas the others will probably have to wait many decades. She needs to be warned that if she spaffs it up the wall and ends up broke, they will still be leaving their estate to the other 2 kids. They are legally the children of her parents whether she likes it or not, or likes her adopted siblings or not. Horrible situation and poor judgement on the part of the grandparent.

I wonder whether Grandma would have disinherited entirely any of her surviving children who had no children, or only had adopted children, or only had children conceived using donated gametes. She seems to have been very dedicated to passing her assets strictly down her bloodline.

Completely agree with this.

Everyone seems to be acting like complete assholes in this family.

• Grandparent doesn't recognise adopted children
• Dad pressuring biological daughter and nieces and nephews to give their some of their inheritance to the adopted kids
• Biological adult daughter seemingly not even willing to put a few grand away for her siblings out a massive inheritance (when she also got more than her cousins), despite being close to at least one of them.
• Bio daughter and her mom emotionally blackmailing dad about potentially leaving the adopted children more to make up for the fact that they didn't receive anything from the grandparent.

No-one comes out of this situation looking good, but your cousin and daughter look particularly mercenary @ChorltonCreamery

I think he needs to speak to a lawyer who specialises in inheritance issues to ascertain whether a challenge is worthwhile.

This

For whatever reason she choose to write her will this way (assuming she had mental capacity etc at time) and from how they are named it is because she only wanted those named to have a share.

It is as she wanted. He would waste a lot of money trying to challenge.

Completely different scenario but I inherited around £40k from my Aunt (as did my brother) when she died as in her Will she left her estate to be divided equally between her siblings but if any of her siblings predeceased her their "share" was to go to their offspring - my Mum sadly predeceased her hence her £80k "share" going to my DB and myself - one of my other Aunts kicked off as she thought this was unfair and the £80k should be divided amongst the surviving siblings, she really tried to pressure us to give it to her , another Aunt wasn't happy that we shared £80k as there were 2 of us but her predeceased brother had 4kids and they only got £20K each - it was very fraught ......