Potential issues with leaving an estate directly to biological grandchildren?

[ChorltonCreamery]

I am driving a neighbour to a solicitor’s appointment next week.

I refused to attend the appointment with her but will sit in the reception while she is in but I have been talking to her about her options though,

She has three children:

One son is divorced and remarried with stepchildren.
One son has a stepchild who has been adopted by him.
One daughter married for nearly three decades.
They all have children.

She wishes to bypass her sons and as a result feels she has to bypass her daughter.

She wants her biological grandchildren to inherit .

She wants to divide assets into thirds so each set of biological grandchildren share a third. So the grandchild who has one sibling would inherit more than the grandchild with two or three siblings.

Are there potential issues with this?

Would the former stepchild who was adopted have any grounds to challenge if the grandchildren are named in the will?

Would her own son be able to challenge on his behalf.

Two of the grandchildren are not yet 18.

She thinks that one son could potentially have more children.

Can anybody think of anything else that needs to be talked about or any potential issues?

way to rub in that the adopted child is not part of the family..

Sounds messy. So child A has one child and so the gc Would get 33%, child b has two children so the gc would get 16.5% each, and child c has three children so each child would get 10.1% each. (Fictional amounts of children - for illustration).

Step children - would not receive anything. I guess if they were new stepchildren to the mix that’s (almost) acceptable.

This. She cannot split it in this unequal way if she is bypassing a generation. Makes no sense.

I mean, she can do what she wants but it's pretty unfair.

Skipping a generation- fine

Leaving equal shares to be divided between sibling groups- fine

Leaving out stepkids- fine

Leaving out an adopted kid- not sure about that one.

Dh's parents skipped him and his sister. His sister's half was shared between her 2 kids, dh's half was shared between his 5 kids. We all think that's fair. Or at least the adults think it's fair, we didn't consult the grandkids.

Dh's 2 older kids are not mine. So my parents wouldn't leave them anything in their wills. They have already inherited from their maternal grandparents, same as my children will inherit from theirs.

Fairness doesn't always mean exactly the same ££ amount.

I'm less sure about an adopted child. I think that could go either way depending on relationships.

Regardless, I hope she explains to her children in advance so there's no surprises.

It’s a very modern family isn’t it. There are children in the family who are not of the family.

I can see the neighbour might be concerned that her hard earned assets end up in the hands of non-family. For example, son who has remarried, he has 2 step-children. He dies, wife inherits, then the 2 step-children, no relation to the neighbour, end up inheriting.

Causes no end of issues.

But the BIL isn’t benefitting, the gc are. I consider each gc as equal, not as a subset of their parent.

You don't love a gc a quarter of the amount compared to the family with one gc.

She should be getting legal advice from a solicitor.

From an emotional perspective however, there is no way that bypassing her children will not cause them pain. Why can't she make an (equal) bequest to all her biological grandchildren of say £50k each with the remainder to her children?

She could recognise step-grandchildren by leaving them a painting or jewellery or something sentimentalif they're close. She doesn't have to leave them an equal share to her biological grandchildren. The step-kids presumably have their own 2 sets of grandparents to inherit from. Why should they inherit from 3 sets of grandparents? That's hardly fair.

But an adopted child is different.

You say she is a nice lady, but she sounds like a tyrant dead set of causing a huge divide and breakdown of the family with this. No good can come of it. Legally she might be able to do it (specialist solicitors needed) but when this all comes to light she will be thought of negatively by all involved. I hope the adopted gc finds out before they spend any further time or affection on someone who doesn’t care about them or their feelings whatsoever.

It's a difficult issue with often no obvious solution that covers all bases. I think to some extent you have to accept that once you are no longer here you cannot control what other people do.

My dad left his estate to my DSis and I and also equal amounts to each DGC - as we have 2 DC each this worked out completely fairly and they were all adults at the time of his death so that was OK too - no Trust required.

I have 2 DC and only one of them has young DC. Ideally I would like to leave some money directly to these DGC but it is difficult to do this in a fair way as my other DC doesn't have DC. Also they are only primary school age although hopefully I will live to see them reach adulthood.

My solution currently is to leave everything 50/50 between my own 2 DC and leave it up to them to take care of their own DC.

Not saying it’s the right way to do it but not splitting it up equally and going with the thirds would be how it would work naturally if a generation were not skipped. Ie it’s split 3 ways between the DC then each third divided up between the respective grandchildren. That’s the only reasoning I could think of it being done that way

I’m adopted - I didn’t think there were much of these attitudes around still.

Legally, I would inherit my parents (who adopted me) estate, but not a title (or property associated to that) if for example they died intestate. However, I lost inheritance rights to anything from my birth family.

So it isn’t about rights, fairness and step grandkids getting inheritances twice over at all is it - it’s about bloodline. I mean they tell you it’s only guaranteed when tracing bloodline if you go back through the female line but that is just a random thought of mine!

Does your friend understand adoption legally? Does she know her kids will leave everything equally across step kids too? There are wills that have separate sort of provision for each partner to allow for step children with other mums or dads - they don’t have inheritance rights of adopted children.

Obviously, this is your friend’s own choice and prerogative and it’s her cash to do as she likes. I think she knows darn well her kids just don’t see ‘bloodline’ the same as she does so is circumventing this issue up front - as is totally her right.

At least her solicitor won’t be making moral judgements but they will be able to guide her through to establish her wishes. I can only see naming issues as if one is pregnant when she dies or becomes incompetent but I guess that’s what solicitors are there to clarify and explain not non qualified moral commentators on MN.

She just has to be clear and specific - especially re the adopted child ie - I have x blood grandkids I want to inherit, x step grandkids and a legally adopted grandkid and these are not to inherit - the solicitor will sort it.

She's not lovely, disinherited an adopted grand child is disgusting. They don't have another family waiting in the wings, she's their family - that's how adoption works.

It wouldn't cause me any pain at all if my parents did that 🤷‍♀️

The inheritance is likely to go to the second wives and their children otherwise and the biological grandchildren of the deceased will get nothing. How is that fair?

The child was 8/9 when he recently came into the family and there is no obligation on the OP's neighbour to accept them on an equal footing as their biological grandchildren

I discovered this when I had cause to suggest that my parents dealt with concerns about where their money would end up by leaving my share directly to their grandchildren, and when my mother died my father was horrified to discover that my sisters and I were legally entitled to equal shares of a percentage of her liquid assets, including those held in joint accounts, unless we signed away our entitlement.

She needs ro rely on the legal advice she paying to receive from the solicitor. Not the op's or Mnet.

She doesn’t sound lovely at all. The child might well have been older when they joined the family but they are still legally part of the family, just as they would be if they weren’t what she seems to think of as a stepchild that’s had an undeserved promotion and had come through the care system.

Fucking vile.

I disagree. The fairest way is to divide the 33% between how ever many grandchildren there are from that branch.

I can't see what's wrong with wanting her money to benefit her biological family only.
Yes, her son has adopted his step child, but that was his decision, he can't really make that choice for his own parents when it comes to their money - it's not automatic that his own parents would view the child as exactly the same as their biological grandchildren. Particularly if the adoption occurred when the child was older and so 'gran' hasn't always been part of his life!

I also get the wanting to exclude step children - they aren't hers and so why should she risk her money going to them by default, instead of the people she wants to benefit?

Since she's going down the route of excluding people that her own children might have chosen to bequeath the money to, I'd advise her to just share it equally between her named gc.

Not fair to the grandchildren who will then each receive different amounts, purely because one set of parents decided to have one child, and another three. The grandchildren can’t help how often their parents’ decided to procreate.

My DM did equal share to 3 dc and the same share to 5 grandchildren. So 1/8 each. Everyone got the same amount. No one complained and no grandchild got more or less than another one. Seemed fair. Parents, if they don’t need the money can do a deed of variation within 2 years of receiving the inheritance and pass the money to their dc. I find it poor to differentiate between adopted and biological dc. That will guarantee upset.

Theres also the issue that a smaller family gets more. Leaving it equally means this doesn’t happen.

Gosh, literally so much potential upset.

I’m part of a situation like this. It hasn’t gone down well. PIL had very separate wills. One left everything to the GC. No fallouts with their children, just didn’t want them to inherit. So out of 4 children only 2 had DC. One has 3 children and one had one. So it’s a very unfair split. Especially when there were fertility problems for at least one family and they have no Dc so therefore no inheritance.

It’s a very unfair situation and leaves bad feelings.

That's interesting you say 'of course' - one of my relatives would have said the same thing. She was a self-confessed Hyacinth Bucket and was slightly horrified when her son and his wife said they were going to adopt. She also expressed her reservations to the social worker doing their assessment, which didn't go down well at all.

But once the child was here (and before the adoption order was even granted) she said her hostility just melted away - replaced by pride at her son choosing to do something so responsible and grown up. I know that the other thing that changed her thinking was seeing how much her son's existing child bonded with their new sibling (I actually caught her weeping happy tears when the siblings and one of their cousins were dancing together at a family wedding about 9 or 10 months after the child arrived). I think it's just over 3 years now since the child came home and I've no doubt my relative considers her every inch her own grandchild.

It's sad that your friend seems to have closed herself off from bonding with the adopted stepchild, adoption is a massive lifelong commitment so he or she obviously means the world to your friend's son.

Ouch. I am an adoptive parent, my child was that age when I adopted them. I can assure you my family 100% see them as my child. The emotional repercussions of excluding that child will be huge. I’m glad many responders feel the same.