Inheritance one - what’s morally correct

[Threebear]

My MIL 70 has just inherited 1.85M net. She was given another house when in her twenties which due to where it was in the world ended up having to be abandoned, though means she has never paid rent or mortgage in her life. She did only have 50k to her name previous to this big windfall. She doesn’t have access to a pension (mistakes in her life / living in the wrong places).

She has 2 children, 37M, 43M. The youngest has a 5yr old child (her only GC). Relationship positive with both.

37M owns a property but in reality only owns the mortgage (340k mortgage). He doesn’t struggle but retains 2 jobs at once in order to live a nice life and have a nice property.

43M is mentally ill, has never retained a proper job, cannot access many benefits where he lives and has a wife who comes from a very poor country with no career herself. They live on the breadline if not lower.

MIL has declared that she is going to keep the full inheritance for herself however will gift each child with 50k as a present.

Firstly I’m fully aware there is a huge difference in thinking between the generations. As a millennial I cannot morally understand the decision. I would never in a million years do this to my beautiful child. I’m so aware of the struggles we have had and can only imagine the struggles in his thirties to get on the property ladder. My hope is we can buy him a small property when he’s older so he can be mortgage free from starting point, all of this to be done with our own investments and money.

The moral question has actually nothing to do with money. If she had none no one would care, if she only got 100k and wanted to keep it, it wouldn’t be questionable as she needs it.

However and big however, she’s just been lumped with 1.85M tax free, and it just doesn’t compute that she believes the relationship with her children and GC will continue if she chooses to do this. The decision is hers and hers only but for anyone who believes she’s morally correct, why I ask would you think your children would ever be ok, forgive you or want to spend anytime ever again with you?

It’s hers to make, but it’s selfish without a doubt. Keeping 95% of that money for her to spend Willy nilly seems crazy while thinking she can retain a relationship with the people she has hurt in this equation.

Personally I think she deserves a nice home, a good investment portfolio but that can all be done within 1.5M no problem at all. If she shared just 350k between her 2 children she would change their lives, they would forever be incredibly grateful, and it would promote to showing how much she cares for them and for a very positive relationship until her death.

The question is simply anyone who agrees with her, are you aware of the rupture and consequent lonely rest of life you would live in your million dollar home as your kids will now likely abandon you?

thanks!

Absolutely this. It is actually quite shocking that someone could live with themselves if they decide to let relatives struggle needlessly when they could easily transform their lives while still retaining more wealth than they could conceivably need. It’s completely unrealistic to think that demonstrating so clearly such a level of callous disregard for your family won’t affect their relationships with you because you’re effective shouting at them that you don’t care about their quality of life, and in such cases this selfishness and lack of concern for others almost always corresponds to an equally selfish attitude to all other aspects of family relationships such as emotional or practical support.

Ultimately this kind of unnecessary wealth hoarding demonstrates a lack of genuine care for other family members which most of us find hard to imagine being able to even consider as we’d not enjoy the money while knowing our children were suffering and we’d decided not to help them if we could do so very easily with no impact on our own financial security. It’s natural that such undeniably selfish behaviour makes people reflect on similar patterns present in others aspects of the relationship which often they may have spent many years previously trying to excuse or explain away and then something like this sends such a clear and undeniable message that the person really doesn’t actually care about their family’s welfare at all, which cannot be explained away with any other explanation, so it forces recognition and acceptance that this person really is that callous and it then can’t be “unseen” or ignored anymore.

Very sad really that even by that stage of life some people are still so obsessed with money over the people in their lives. It’s a very specific kind of mentality which is certainly not present in all people in that cohort but seems to be prevalent in a surprising amount and is at odds with how all previous and subsequent generations tend to view family wealth and relationships, and indeed how thes are viewed by people the in the same age cohort in most countries on Earth who haven’t adopted this mindset.

I’m sure it must be very upsetting for the people with parents like this, to see such undeniable evidence that thes care about your quality of life so little, but it’s also fascinating from a sociological perspective in terms of why this specific cohort in the UK has such a high prevalence of this type of behaviour, far above the proportion in the population as a whole (younger or older generations) or the attitudes in other countries which generally don’t seem to reflect this same hoarding behaviour and disregard for family. I wonder what caused so many of them to become this way, especially given that they lived through an extremely prosperous period so generally it’s not a result of hardship.

I will never ever know why people discuss inheritance with their family. It’s broken up so many families including my own (in two instances!) . Who cares? I’d rather have my family alive than dead anyway so I’m not going to cause a rift over money! Why are ye talking about it? Just leave her to it and nod and smile and enjoy having a mum

@Threebear "Her sons will not take care of her, they’ve made that clear, they’ve made their bed and possibly this is them having to lie in it. In that case I still blame her for being such a dire mother that no one would wish to take her in, in her final days, but the reality is they have not and will not “earn” this inheritance."
The reality is lots of adult children do not want to care for their elderly parents (they'll have their hand out though), regardless of how much was done for them and sometimes because too much was done for them and they were spoiled.
Blaming Mum is a convenient excuse for a lack of care and poor behaviour, but at some point you have to stand up, be your own person and take responsibility for your own decisions, instead of blaming your Mum all the time. It really isn't an attractive quality in a life partner is it?

My mil was funny - she told me she thought she was the perfect mum - dh was an absolute dream, so easy and she thought anyone with a difficult, badly behaved kid had poor parenting to blame - she says she learned a bit of humility when she had more kids and you'll learn that soon enough if/when your perfect little boy doesn't turn out to be a perfect little man and you get the blame! Pride comes before a fall!

I cannot imagine being of a mindset where I assume someone who inherits doesn’t have the right to keep or spend that money exactly as they choose, or that they’re morally obligated to give significant sums of it to their children.

Your DP isn’t obliged to care for his mother.

But if he and his brother have made it clear that they don’t intend to then it’s very sensible of her to ensure she has sufficient funds to pay for any care and support she needs.

You can’t have it both ways.

No. You don't "earn" inheritance by caring for your elderly parents. But you also don't just "presume" that it will be shared before your parents are dead.

I care for my elderly dad. Not because I'm going to get anything out of it, but because I love him and it's the right thing to do. I don't believe that this gives me any entitlement to his money because it's his money and not mine.

I will absolutely help my dc in whatever way I can, regardless of whether or not my dc ends up caring for me in my old age - it isn't a transaction.

🍿

If when the time comes it turns out that she did actually set aside a load of money for the grandkids and left you out, you're going to feel like a right twit.

I'm loving your pass agg plan of phasing her out so gradually she doesn't even realise. The point of being pass agg is to communicate your rage and displeasure successfully so that it's noticed, but still give you plausible deniability when someone confronts you about it. When the pass part is so pass that the mark doesn't even fucking notice it, you've totally fucked up and it's just you planning out some inch by inch vengeance like a Lego Game of Thrones character that has literally no effect on anyone else.

You are luckier than you realise.
My husband had nothing as a child and will have nothing as an adult.
That is despite his mother having had a big mortgage free home and around £300,000 inheritance. After she blew the money, she sold her home, rented, blew that money and eventually moved into social housing. She’s never worked, so no workplace pension.
She will die with nothing to pass to her son and he still wouldn’t think of going NC.

They're not discussing inheritance - they want the money now!!!!

Absolutely this - calling her selfish is not painting you in a good light. Who knows what will happen in her life in the next 10 years or so? Who knows if she may make other gifts over the next coming years? This whole post smacks of incredible entitlement - it would be morally right to remember it is her money until she dies and you are not entitled to any of it.

And just saw her mother lived to 102. So it is possible she needs to fund the next 30 years of her life. Of course she should ensure she has money for that.

Would your partner really cut off his mum because she “only” gave him £50k?

I'm really struggling to understand why a woman who doesn't even buy her children a birthday card/present and watches her mentally ill son living below the breadline is getting so much support on this thread. What's going on?

It's not that we think she sounds fabulous as much as we don't think "it's not about the money but if she doesn't give us more than the £50k she's already given us now before she dies then we'll abandon her because we hate the horrible bitch anyway" sounds much better.

Any parent who watched their mentally ill child struggle in poverty and has the means to help but doesn't, is a despicable person though. OP said it's not this one act, this is just the final straw for the sons'. People seem to be ignoring all these facts.

I guess a lot of us are just not hugely convinced that it's such a final straw, or it's not about money, when OP has literally put a price on what it would cost to keep her in their lives. It seems her loathsomeness is not (financially) irredeemable.

Inheritance does weird things to people. There's a reason it features in so many murder mysteries.

That's what I mean about the support this mother is receiving. You still haven't even mentioned the despicable mother.

What are you on about? Of course I mentioned her. I talked about how however despicable she is, OP would still accept her if she passes on enough money before she dies, while apparently still hating her independently of all this and denying that it's about money. That's what's not sitting well with a lot of people.

If the amount of money was different I would think you were talking about my own mil, she did the exact same thing.
I could never do that to my child.

She's giving around .03% of what she's inheriting to each child. If she'd inherited 100k, she'd be giving away 600 quid in total. Hmm.

It's not clear what the mental health problem is - my friend's son has mental health problems and he uses alcohol to self medicate - the absolute last thing he would need is £350k - I'd say even £50k would probably send him over the edge.

Everyone knows what you mean and I agree. It’s weird to give your children such a small amount in comparison to what you’ve inherited.
Most people on MN are just bored and live for telling other people on the internet that they are wrong.
That generation can be very odd when it comes to money.