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.

So, he "quietly" broke the law?

He had no right to do this. People can leave money to whoever they like. Wills should be respected.

The will is the will.
these children are not his biological grandchildren and he has every right not to include them his will.

It's sad that she didn't recognise adopted children as her grandchildren. My brother and I have both adopted, my mother wouldn't dream of leaving them out of her will.

I don’t find it sad. She’s allowed to not think of them as her grandchildren and for whatever reason she didn’t want them to have HER money. Just because someone gets involved with someone who has a child already, and that individual classes that child as ‘their own’ doesn’t mean the wider family think of them the same way. It can be the same with adoption. And I bet there were some issues with the mother of the adopted kids.

That’s awful.

I am not sure how your uncle could do that? Small amounts are neither here nor there. That’s a breach of his fiduciary duty as executor.

I’m also an adoptee. I think there is a difference for a lot of people when children are adopted by both parents and when a single parent - usually a man - adopts a step child. Legally adoption means the same, but I can understand why someone with a family connection to an original child of a marriage would want to protect them.

I think the reason this feels sad (to me anyway) is the fact that she's set the will up this way specifically to stop her son passing his inheritance to whomever he wants. So not just leaving them out of her will but a determination to make sure they can't benefit from their father getting anything.

There's nothing that can be done but I can see why her son is upset in this scenario.

Grandparents can be protective of the interests of children from their DS/DD’s first marriages/relationship over the children of second marriages as they fear that if the DIL/SIL outlives their spouse the children of the first marriage may be disadvantaged. My friend has just written a will favouring much older grandchildren from her son’s first marriage over children of her sons second marriage as she expects that his wife will advantage her own kids and kids of their relationship as her son and DIL#2 have mirror wills. She’s seen her son prioritise the second family and feels she’s redressing an imbalance.

Wise lady.

I think the people suggesting that the deceased was trying to avoid everything ending up going to the second wife and her kids, and nothing to the biological grandchild, are probably spot on. I wonder if this is exactly why the will skips a generation.

She should have left them something. Nothing is harsh. It really says they don’t exist. As children they were not responsible for seeing her. That was down to parents but I would not suggest they had equal to the others, but with a great deal of money, there should have been recognition of their existence.

Agreed. It's a bit of a genius move tbh: if the men continue to not make due provision for the children by their first wife then granny will do it for them.

My understanding is that he did a deed of variation, whereby he and my mother’s other siblings received a tiny bit less money so that my cousins could be treated equally. I said it was done “quietly” as he and my Mum didn’t want my cousins to know that they had been originally excluded from the will. So they all got about £300 less, so that my cousins could be included. They also kept it quiet from my Mum’s sister (who adopted my cousins) as they knew she would be devastated. So it was done quietly but legally.

No, if people got less money than they were entitled to (based on the will) and they didn’t know it, it was not legal.

ETA - I may be confused who “they” meant. So, the only people who got less money than they were left in the will, knew and agreed to it?

It's perfectly legal if all adult beneficiaries agreed to reduce their own share to ensure the adopted GC were treated equally. I'm assuming this would be what happened, that the adopted GC received money out of the adult children's legacies.

However, it would not be legal if the beneficiary grandchildren's shares were reduced to the benefit of their adopted cousins and they were not informed/did not consent.

Yes, that was why I did the ETA, as I wasn't sure who "they" was.

Though the math doesn't really work unless there were a lot of adults who agreed. If each grandchild got ~2000, and each adult only got ~300 less, it would mean that there had to be 13 adults who reduced their amount.

But it’s not his inheritance is it?

People exclude blood relatives from wills all the time, as indeed here, where DGMs own 4 children were disinherited and as DGD's father may do to his biodaughter out of financial necessity having now created a young family in his later years who would need looking after in the event he died before they were fully fledged adults. And as a PP said you can make a choice to marry again and have more kids and take on your new wife's kids but none of your family have to like it. And if they don't it's tough. These kids will inherit from their mum and dad and I'm sure will be absolutely fine. They may even end up with more than DGD received from her DGM. None of them sound like they will be left with just pennies.

It’s still a massive snub though. A small amount is worth it and who knows what the others might do with their money? You cannot control everything from the grave.

So you don’t think what’s written in a will matters? That a family member or well anyone can say “nope! I want this to happen with the money!” ?

@McSpoot so there were 6 children who received an inheritance and a large number of grandchildren. My uncle, who was the executor, asked all of the siblings except my aunt who adopted the children, if they would be prepared to accept a little less money, so that Julie and Clare (not their real names) could get something. I don’t know the exact amount, but it was a few hundred. They all agreed. Had they not, my uncle and my mother would have transferred some of their inheritance under a deed of variation to ensure that Julie and Clare didn’t lose out.

@EvangelineTheNightStar Where did I say that? However I do think wills should not be designed to knowingly upset those left behind. With a sizeable estate, a few £000 to adopted dc should have been given. It would not make much of a dent in the other amounts. The existing non adopted family want to keep their money but in some families there would be an agreement to give money to the left out dc if they all thought the deceased was wrong. They can give after they receive their money if they wish. Here they won’t but not everyone making a will is pleasant or saintly! They are sometimes wrong and a bit nasty.

It's also "wrong and a bit nasty" to remarry, create a second family without accounting and adjusting for the effect on your first family, not just for the emotional impact which is bad enough, but the almost inevitable situation of your legacy going entirely to the second wife, who may very well find herself "unwilling" to honour any verbal promise to leave the estate equally between all the children and instead leave it all to hers. Don't forget in this instance, one of the adopted children is the bio child of the second wife and will have a bio dad and 2 sets of bio grandparents. That they are either present and involved but assetless, not interested or dead is not for other people to compensate for.

If fathers who remarry told their wife to be: as you know, with my being a second hand husband and father, I already have children and it is my intention to support them financially and in person as I have always done and maybe more, to compensate for us no longer sharing a family home, which means that my resources of time and money will not be 100% available to you and any future children. This means I may be away from you to spend time with them as needed, or to support them with the cost of education, buying a car, house deposit etc and when I die they will receive a legacy from me that will be as generous as I can be but may impact your ability to continue enjoying the life we have now.
Still interested?

Almost never happens: it's the norm for the kids from the first family to be left out and no one is ever too bothered too much about that, bar the kids themselves who suck it up with all the other slights they've endured over the years. The DGM put things straight because she couldn't trust her own son to do the right thing by his daughter, her DGD.