My husband has two children from a previous relationship. We have a daughter between us. We have straightforward mirror wills, leaving everything to one another.
We want to agree between us what happens to our children's inheritances, preferably in a straightforward way, so that we're both clear on the other's wishes, as are the children when the time comes.
The complication is that although there are three children between us, two of them effectively have three parents to inherit from (mum, dad and stepmum (me), whereas our daughter only has me and my husband. I may inherit a little from my father at some point, and I would want this to go to my daughter, his granddaughter, rather than being split in three (the older two are in their mother's mother's will and will receive a decent amount from her). However I don't want to overthink it or make things complicated by ring-fencing this here and that there. We very much share finances.
Would a fair and simple way of doing things be as follows:
- Ask executors to treat all assets, regardless of where they came from (eg my dad) as one pot.
- Divide the total in half, treating one half of this pooled total as 'his' bequests pot and one half as 'mine'.
- Give my half entirely to my daughter, save a small consideration of say 5% each to the older children to acknowledge our relationship
- Split my husband's half three ways?
Is this a mean suggestion? Or does it just our youngest gets a fair share?The older children, as I say, will also inherit from their own mother and already have a legacy on its way directly from their grandmother. We don't know how much that will end up being, or how much our youngest might benefit from inheriting other money from my side later on (I have two childless sisters, but they are both married and I don't know what their wills state. Both their husbands have neices).
I have a good relationship with the older children from many weekends and holidays together, so I do absolutely consider them part of my family and not just my husband's children or my daughter's siblings. Maybe we should be doing 50%, 25%, 25%, which might 'feel' nicer for the older kids - but knowing the older ones will inherit from their mum's side this would seem to put DD at a disadvantage.
I'd really appreciate some advice.