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?

Well I’m going against the grain, she can leave her money to who she wants. The step children are not her grand children, they have their own blood line/ grandparents same with the adopted child. We know nothing about the step children/ adopted child at all yet everyone is keen to brand this woman horrible!

You cannot assume the adopted grandchild will get anything at all. There quite probably are no grandparents in touch with the child. Neither can there be an assumption that other grandparents of the step children have any money, let alone leave it to the grandchildren - most people don’t leave much to grandchildren and many people don’t have a lot of money. Why anyone would deliberately leave them out is beyond me.

Of course people can do what they want, but do they really want to be divisive and unkind? They should be included. I agree that parents adopting is to be admired, not cause for exclusion.

I can never understand the strong feelings on here over inheritances. Calling this women fucking vile and utterly reprehensible etc.

Nobody is owed someone else's money. The lady feels strongly that whatever she has built up and accumulated during her lifetime, goes to those biologically related to her.

I am not entirely in agreement with her position, but can understand her attitude, and certainly don't think she is a nasty woman for choosing this path for HER money and assets.

I always find inheritance posts on MN very eye-opening. Many are very free-thinking with other people's money, but I wonder if in reality their generosity of spirit on here would translate to real life.

That's not the grandmother's problem. She can leave her money to a dog charity if she wants to. She has absolutely zero obligation to leave it to her step-children

I'm another one who finds the attitude on here to be mad. On the one hand people quite happily say ' oh x can leave it all to the cats' home if they want', then x leaves it to exactly who they want to and suddenly x is evil. Perhaps it's best to assume that no one is entitled to anything, but to be pleased if anything at all is received? I have an acquaintance who is receiving nothing from a will, despite it being a parent, it's all going to the RSPCA apart from a couple of sentimental items. Those are the parent's final wishes.

No one is owed anything I agree. But as a parent, if you decide not to leave your estate to be shared equally among your children, it’s almost inevitably going to lead to pain. Probably less so if you just decide to leave 100% to the cats home or whatever. That might cause bewilderment but at least your children are still being treated equally!

The woman in question sounds utterly controlling. She seems to not want to leave her children her estate because she doesn’t want to ‘risk’ them having control over it. She seems to have a problem that at some point years in the future (long after she’s dead) one son might leave something to his adopted son. That is despicable behaviour to many of us. An adopted child is no doubt just as loved and wanted by their parents as any biological child. Seems the grandparent can’t get her head round that and just wants to exert control and doesn’t care what division and pain she might cause because she won’t be around to witness it.

I work in this area and I can assure you that in many circumstances leaving everything to the children equally is absolutely not as straightforward and argument-free as people assume it would be. The children might not actually like each other, refuse to communicate/cooperate, might be dead-locked over the sale of the property, one or more of the siblings may have got much more money from the parents during their lifetime or got help with buying their own property which other siblings find unfair and try to reclaim etc etc. It's definitely not preventing arguments just leaving everything to the children.

This.
Her money, her choice.

@JaspersCarrott Why upset people on a power trip though? It’s not spreading love is it? It’s deliberately divisive and therefore unkind. People can choose to do all sorts of horrible things - doesn’t make it right though!

Because its HER money.
And HER choice.
She might do well to let everyone know what the plan is once she's been to the Solicitors, so everyone knows how things are to be shared, but no-one, child, grandchild, step-grandchildren or adopted child are entitled to an inheritance..... just because that's not what YOU would do, doesn't put her in the wrong. You have no idea of the family dynamics, other than what's been said by the OP.

It’s not about the money, it’s about fairness. If I received a lesser share of my parents estate than my sibling I would think they loved her more than me. And once you find out in someone’s will, they’re dead and you can never know why.

If siblings don’t like each other and refuse to communicate, that’s on them. But the other scenarios you describe - the parent giving some children more money than others during their life time - boil down to the same thing of the parent deciding not to treat their children equitably. Which in many people’s eyes is a despicable way to treat your children.

and before the usual cries of ‘treating children fairly doesn’t always mean treating them exactly the same’ - yeap, we all have a different dynamic with each child and might respond to them accordingly. But when it comes to big financial hand outs it’s always going to be potentially divisive if children are treated differently. Ok so one adult child might earn more than another. But it’s quite possible they could become sick/ made redundant/ burn out at some future point. And sometimes one adult child has made poor decisions/ not worked as hard etc which means they may appear more ‘in need’ of support. It’s very unfair to then effectively ‘punish’ other siblings simply because they’ve worked hard and taken more personal responsibility for their choices.

Nobody is owed someone else's money. The lady feels strongly that whatever she has built up and accumulated during her lifetime, goes to those biologically related to her.

I also feel a bit conflicted about money. We behave as if it's ours and this confers moral good on us (I saved that money! I worked for it!) But actually having a legacy of about a million is clearly due more to the rise in house prices. Grandma didn't work personally her whole life saving 25k every year of her working life. Her money is due to good luck. All our savings are due to good luck. So my mum gave me 30k as a house deposit and I had a professional job and my children were born alive and healthy and my marriage didn't break up. This doesn't make me better than someone who has had to rent always, who had to stop work to care for a disabled relative, who sadly married someone who turned out to be financially controlling and abused them.

Saying "This is my money" proudly feels sort of off, to me.

All you can do is work hard, do your best, try to be fair in sharing the gifts life gives you.

It’s not the inheritance per se, it’s treating an adopted child different to blood children when legally and morally they are the same.

Would she cut out one of the biological grandchildren if it turned out they were the product of a secret affair? Or if there had been an IVF mix up? What if her sons are sperm donors, would she track those children down to include on her will?

I get step children may come and go out of your life, and you can do what you want with your money, it doesn’t mean it isn’t cruel to leave our an adopted child and I can think she’s not a lovely woman for being so cut throat about her familial relationships.

@JaspersCarrott That is the unfortunate thing though - her money - her power. It is not kind to shout this out without any regard to the consequences. Why not use money to
keep everyone happy instead of using it to be divisive? It’s unpleasant and a total power trip. I don’t think people expect a specific sum, but they reasonably expect fairness and love.

i agree it’s “off”.

@WheretheFishesareFrightening

”It’s not the inheritance per se, it’s treating an adopted child different to blood children when legally and morally they are the same.”

I get what you’re saying with this, but unfortunately, the child is not a blood relative, and that’s the difference. Maybe op’s friend hasn’t a relationship with this child either, unlike the other gc who maybe older (although the argument falls down if there are younger grandchildren also). I’m not saying her attitude is right, but it’s not unheard of.

Personally, I think she'd be better to split her estate so her kids, bii grandkids and non bio grandkids are all considered.

I would leave the 3 kids 20% each
Leave the 3 bio grandchildren 10% each and the adopted and step grandchildren 10 to share.

For example if the estate is 900k
Son 180k
Son 180k
Daughter 180k
Grandchild A 90k
Grandchild B 90k
Grandchild C 90k
Adopted and step grandchildren share 90k

That way no one is overlook, everyone is happy and she hadn't left a shit show of resentment behind her. Realistically, her grandkids could get 300k each then marry and divorce and lose half of the money to a ex partner she's never met. I get she wants to protect her assets but I wouldn't do that to the detriment of my kids/ grandchildren and their relationships with each other.

That's ridiculous. One of my children is interested in potentially fostering to adopt. I will treat them just the same. Your friend is being awful to the poor adopted grandchild. That is as much her grandchild as the biological ones.

My own will specifies that anything left to grandchildren is left to biological grandchildren and legally adopted grandchildren. If my child considers them their child, it's my grandchild. Step children and foster children are excluded.

The thing is you can't say that an adopted grandchild is as much a grandchild as a biological one. You can say it for yourself, but it's not something an adoptive parent can apply on everyone else's behalf!
I think it's easier to view an adopted child as a grandchild if they've been part of your family since they were tiny, but if your son chooses to adopt their older step child, the grandparents won't necessarily have the same relationship that they have with the dc they've known since birth. Emotional bonds are not automatically formed alongside legal ones.

This is why people have to be really careful when they blend families because it has far reaching impact on those children and other members of the family.

Well you can - Adoption puts the child in an equal footing to the biological children legally.

Every child born to a parent, or adopted by a parent, was not ever via some personal choice of the grandparents. Some grandparents have favourites for sure - but delineating between adopted and biological on that singular basis is an outdated concept stemming from the understanding all the child is and becomes is about inherited biological stuff - my parents were asked if they were concerned about me having ‘bad blood’.

Anyway, it’s definitely all about bloodline really isn’t it - but then that is itself dodgy ground and where would you draw the line - egg or sperm assisted conception ok?

@MsJinksI think for some people, genetic connection is everything and so they might also feel less connected to a child born from sperm/egg donation. But mostly, I think it comes down to the relationship. If a grandparent has known a child since birth, the biological connection is probably less important than the emotional one. While adoption makes a child legally , related and puts them on the same footing as bio children, I can well imagine that a gp wouldn't feel the same about a child who came into their family at an older age - the emotional bond just might not have formed. And regardless of the legalities, the gran can leave her money to whoever she wants.

Not everyone has the capacity to love a non (bio) related child, sadly.

Then that person would have no place in my life, or my biological children's lives. Otherwise you're the kind of asshole that my grandmother was when she described an adopted grandchild (from birth) as 'not really one of us'. Or another relative who told her adopted brother (from birth) that he wasn't a real part of the family.

You can't force love but you can treat all the children equally and build some sort of relationship with them. Embracing them equally goes a long way towards that.

Step children are not the same. I can still treat them fairly but they can be taken away from any relationship I have with them, or the relationship they have with my child, if the relationship breaks up. It just doesn't feel as secure a tie.

My mother is planning to leave everything split equally between 5 grandchildren from 2 children, her 2 other children dont have children and she has largely fallen out with them. This seems fine to me. Her children are all in 40s and 50s and adults of that tenure should have their shit sorted out imo and not be relying on inheritance imo. And anyway who knows what, if anything, will be left from a property once care etc plays out. Seems weird to me to now allocate across grandchildren (included adopted) equally though.

Anyway, some of the gc are quite young. I like the idea of not inheriting until 23, for sensibleness and so they can use to pay off student loans, if there is anything left when she passes away. How do you physically do that? if she died now all 5 are under 23. As executor once the property is sold, what do I do with the money until they are each 23?

It normally goes into trust until they reach the age of inheritance.

I know someone whose mother died when she was a child. Her father inherited the mother’s considerable estate. He remarried a woman who already had children. When the father died the second wife inherited the first wife’s estate. She left everything to her own children. The biological daughter got nothing. However, her biological grandmother left her estate including her house to her biological grandchild. The grandmother never met th her step grandchildren. Only on Mumsnet would you have greedy stepmothers who think everything should go to her own children. Cinderella syndrome.
There are a lot of MN posters who think it is their right to control other, unrelated, women’s money. It is immoral. Someone who has worked for her money all her life has the legal and moral right to to leave it to whoever she chooses. So many massively entitled posters on here.