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.

But none of that makes any sense and in this day and age is rubbish! Of course people remarry! It’s life. What is wrong is not leaving anything to the adopted dc. A relatively small amount - but something, It’s inevitable that some marriages break down and families change shape and composition. She didn’t know what her son would do. Unless she had seen his will! Why would he have forgotten about his other dc? Most parents don’t. His life has changed and his dm didn’t like it. It is nasty when a will leaves people out who could have been left something very easily,

@OhDear111 when you’ve implied that a person leaving a will is the person “controlling things from the grave”. You cannot control everything from the grave.

Parents should prioritise the support of their children in my opinion

Absolutely this. I feel bad for the relative being put on the spot. Plus I think the grandma reasonable to settle legacy to blood grandchildren. If the adopted children are still minors did she even have the same relationship with them?

As always on Mumsnet, there’s a lot of misinformation and people without any legal knowledge confidently giving their advice. The simple answer is that nobody can tell you without seeing the actual wording in the Will. The adopted grandchild or their parent on their behalf should seek professional legal advice.

Your dismissal of it not making sense and being rubbish, that in this day and age it's just life is part of the problem. It makes a lot of sense to the kids no longer centred in that parent's life, actually.

Remarriage whether through divorce or bereavement rarely considers the effect on the step children. Now I will acknowledge that there are families where they have blended seamlessly and lovingly and there is no differentiation: they all get on, all is shared and everyone is happy to be part of a large family that all really like each other and get on well (mostly the very well off who all have a lot anyway, and the very poor who have nothing to fight over). I think that may be the exception rather than the rule and isn't where the problem lies. You just have to read through this thread to see how far a bit of thoughtlessness which can morph into casual cruelty on the part of the remarrying parent and their new spouse will travel through the life of a step child:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4118316-to-think-step-children-get-a-hugely-bad-deal?page=1

In the case of this thread's subject matter, the cousins all get on; they are, bar one aged 16, all adult.

The daughter in question is in higher education and has done very well so am assuming she's completed her first degree with stellar results and is on her Masters/PhD. So aged 21 to 24.

Her father must now be roughly early to late 50s and entering that stage of life where he's looking ahead to financing the tricky years between now and retirement but with a younger family to support.

He's married a woman whose bio child is now in secondary school with whom his DD has no relationship. I'm assuming this child is a lot younger than the DGD but not young enough for her to have taken a sisterly interest in him the time she first met him, unlike the very young non bio adopted child who she is close to.

The second wife is probably a good few years younger than her husband (10?) and will need financial support from her DH for their shared children for at least another 15-20 years which puts him in his early to late 70s. Wealth generally follows wealth so I doubt he's on the breadline but for him and his wife to be "bullying" his bio DD, chasing his nephews and nieces to share their inheritances and "losing his mind" suggests his financial planning for these in between years has gone to ratshit as a result of him not inheriting as anticipated, and his adopted children being excluded from the Will.

I imagine his DM foresaw all this, that his DD would inherit nothing on his death due to the obligations he had taken on which would cost a lot just at the point his earnings would decrease and decided to leave him with the consequences of his planning rather than her DGD. DGM did the hard nosed calculations that she knew her son hadn't.

@HomeTheatreSystem Much of thst is supposition. However no bullying would have happened if she had at least given the adopted dc something! That’s the point. Making it absolutely clear they meant nothing is somewhat sad and everyone knows this. We don’t entirely know the reasons for this. It is just kinder to have given them something. I’ve not said a lot of money either. It might even have healed something within the family but it’s divided, as intended.

Are you the OP in disguise, @HomeTheatreSystem? Because if not then you’re making up an awful lot of details that you can’t possibly know to be true, that coincidentally happen to support your argument.

You know that you cannot switch username mid thread.

Hmmm...adoptee here.

It's not surprising that the older child isn't included as really he is the grandmother's step-grandchild for all intents and purposes, as far as she was concerned. Very thin relationship with his step-sister (the beneficiary) and it sounds like no relationship with the grandmother at all.

The younger child appears to be a child of the marriage and that's tougher, from my point of view.

But I can very much see why the grandmother made the choices she did, especially if the dad and step mum are bullying the daughter now. She probably feared that it would all go to the second wife.

I have to say, I'd do the same, in her shoes.

It's perhaps supposition but not irrational, in terms of the ages assumed at any rate, and the fact that the children of the woman whose will it is, were not aware they were being passed over, accd to the OP's posts. (It would be stupid to 'plan' on any inheritance though, given possible care needs, but we don't know the composition of the estate.)

My own supposition is that the father is getting it in the ear from his beloved second wife and this battle shows where his loyalty lies, primarily.

Wrong quote, sorry

@OVienna You don’t know that either! He has nothing for his adopted dc. In the circumstances I might be peeved too. This is why something should have been left for these dc. Not the same as the others but it’s divided the family and it won’t heal.

I'd be bloody angry if any of these were my children, especially the adopted ones.

Why not share equally between all grandchildren, adopted or otherwise. It seems to have designed to creat division.

That's why I used the word 'supposition.'

Leaving something for the adopted DC might have opened the way for a successful challenge as it could be construed that she was recognising them as family and should have treated them equably. So, nice sentiment but might have caused more issues.

Don't forget we're looking at this with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that the adopted DCs inheritance was nothing, and thinking, how mean, you could have left £5k apiece but had that happened, you can guarantee the father would have still lost his mind because of the vast disparity and possibly had grounds for a successful challenge of the Will because he could say DGM recognised them as her family but was unfair in leaving them so much less. It sounds like the DGM was very well advised and did what needed to be done to achieve the desired outcome and minimise the chances of a successful challenge to her Will.

I am not sure it would leave the door open for a challenge if a nominal sum had been given. Sometimes the advice is to "leave them a fiver" to remove ambiguity - not sure if that holds any water.

In any case, there seems to be no basis here for a challenge.

See, for me there’s a qualitative difference between stepchildren and adopted children, when it comes to inheritance. I would expect a stepchild to be treated kindly by grandparents, but not necessarily to be left an inheritance. But if a son or daughter has made a lifelong commitment to a child by choosing to adopt them, giving them exactly the same legal status as a natural-born child, then I think it’s pretty appalling of the grandparents to discount this.

Can you imagine the replies if someone posted that they had been unable to have children and so had adopted a son and a daughter, and that those children had been left completely out of their grandparents’ will while their siblings’ children inherited everything? I don’t think anyone would be jumping to defend them then.

The differences between OPs case and the theoretical one that you've outlined, make all the difference.

@HomeTheatreSystem The bar to challenge a will is very very high. If she had left then something that would have been fine. I cannot see where a challenge would come from. Often people leave differing amounts to their children because they don’t see them as equal.

She's fine anyway because as previous poster have stated, the beneficiaries are named specifically.

There is literally no basis to dispute.

@OViennaYes, I believe that too.

The Will was presumably made after the grandchildren were adopted, so therefore the grandparent was aware. The grandparent decided to leave out their non-biological grandchildren from their Will. Yes, it's crap. Grandchildren are grandchildren regardless if they're biological or not. However, as the grandchildren have been individually named, I can't see how the Will can be challenged. The grandparent has deliberately left the non-biological grandchildren out, that is very obvious.

The brother should not be pressuring other family members to share with his adopted children. That's wrong. It's not the other grandchildren's fault that his two adopted children have been left out. They have no obligation to share the money they've inherited.

That is such a kind thing to do. It’s also legal for a beneficiary to agree to reduce their share which is obviously what happened. Quite rightly there is no need for anyone else to know.

This is why wills commonly use language to cover children who are legally the children of the family (ie biologically or by adoption), and cover those in existence at the time the will was drafted as well as any who may subsequently come into existence, rather than naming them. Naming them shows a clear intent to benefit only the biological children, and is unlikely to be challengeable unless the left-out children’s parent can show that they were financially dependent on the testator at the time of their death. Which seems unlikely given that they’ve deliberately excluded those children in the will.

Very sad and will probably lead to a deep family schism.