Dh wants to give away entire 6 figure inheritance...

[Drizl]

We've been together for 22 years and married for 16. Until now everything was great but this latest issue might just break us apart. My mil moved in next door to us 10yrs ago so we could help her out. My dh was round there every day tending to her and she was frequently here at ours. She has since died and dh is the sole heir to her substantial estate. He (we?) will inherit a large 6 figure sum. Dh announced earlier tonight that it's his intention to give away the entire sum to charity as we are moderately well off and there are people out there who really need it. I'm so unhappy he has taken this decision unilaterally. There is so much work needs doing on our house and I have to make do with his Heath Robinson repairs. We could pay our mortgage off and still have spare change but he won't hear of it. I'm furious the subject is not even up for discussion. He believes it's his sole decision what happens as only he is named in the will. I feel really hurt about his lack of willingness to even have a discussion about it and it's making me question our whole relationship. We're supposed to be a partnership. What do you think?

user
nope where I am from men and women are equal
And I can't see you directing that comment at other people who have stated. If the MIL wanted too leave her something guess what she would of done. I personally think it's disgusting trying to argue over somebody's will and trying to pick at it but hey ho!

Folk are projecting a lot. OP has only posted twice. In neither post did she say she took much role in looking after the MIL.

Hi Op.

I am raising money for a deposit for a house. I'll send you my bank details .

I'm not surprised your shocked and upset OP.

I hope like others have suggested that it's just the shock talking on your husbands part.

What would worry me is that you think he'd treat the 2 oldest any different,if he did that for me would be the end of the relationship.My DH isn't the biological parent to all 5 of our DC and there's no way I'd ever stay if he treated any of them any less important than one another.

I would never see my husband in the same light again. I am NOT money grabbing, but FFS you look after your own family before giving to charity. I had an inheritance, not this amount, a fraction of it. I used it to pay off our mortgage after discussion with DH and we both agreed on this. Would not have occurred to me to unilaterally decide what to do with it.

As others have said upthread, how do you know 80% of it isn't going on fat cat salaries anyway. I'd much rather my children have it. I think the stepchildren thing clouds things a bit, and I'd probably be a bit concerned about his attitude to your other children. If he won't discuss it, and is prepared to give all that money away, when you have issues with house repairs, I would definitely see a solicitor for advice. That doesn't commit you to anything but at least you'll know what your options are

Good for him. I don't believe in inherited wealth and think inheritance tax should be much higher. I think his heart is absolutely in the right place and I admire him for it.

On the other hand, some sort of discussion and compromise would be more usual in a marriage and obviously a better way to approach things. Would he consider 50:50? Giving the money away gradually so that you can change your mind? It will take time to decide the best use for it anyway.

I agree that I would be a bit unimpressed if DH just decided what to do with a large sum of money (though I suspect he has every right to?). In this instance I would admire him, but ask that we keep a bit, as I'm not quite that nice!

It does rather depend on what "moderately well off" means. But fixing his "Heath Robinson" repairs is not going to take up much of the inheritance if it is really a large six figure sum. Do you mean 150-200 or 500-1,000,000? Just occurred to me you may mean the former not the latter.

My MIL handled this a bit better when she had assets to sort, she split it 3 ways between my DH, his brother and a series of charities.

Can the morons posting about divorce please stfu. She wouldn't likely be entitled to any.

Typical mumsnet. A grieving man behaves out of character = divorce. A new mother behaves out of character = she's depressed you selfish twat! How dare you not coddle her!

His DM has just died. I think supporting him to process that loss should be your priority tbh. I imagine he feels guilty about benefiting from his mother's death and your focus on the inheritance will be churning up lots of conflicted emotions. Helping him to find bereavement counselling may be more beneficial than contacting solicitors to try to get a share of his inheritance.

I wonder if he also feels that having a load of suddenly available somehow undermines his efforts in providing for his family?

As the earner in my little family, I do feel a little conflicted about not being so 'needed' once the mortgage was paid off etc.

It is certainly a bit easier to put up with shit at work if you think you job is crucial to your families survival....not so easy when you feel more like you are funding holidays and lifestyle....

As a note, it's very easy to check if a charity's income is going on 'fat cat salaries'. Look at their annual accounts online. Odds are it won't. Charity is work for spends 75% of all income direct on charitable activities. The rest go on fundraising (fundraising team bring in 70% of annual income, cost 12%) and the rest of administrative staff etc, most of whom are part time and on low wages.

We're not unusual.

I get that people are sympathetic about the OP, but no need for charity bashing.

suddenly available money

I agree with kungfupanda. This thread is crazy.

I agree with Dixie, could you point out to him that if you used the money to pay off your mortgage it would free up your monthly income to donate to charity, or he could work less and donate his time to charity, but it would mean that you, he and the DCs then had the security of your house being owned outright to fall back on if he ever lost his job/anything happened that meant he couldn't work. I'd imagine that peace of mind is something his MIL would have liked and it still enables him to give money to charity?

I have a horrible sinking feeling that he doesn't want the two he isn't the father of to benefit from 'his' family money

OP I understand that this is a shock and a rubbish situation but don't think the worst about your husband's feelings for his stepchildren. By extension of your logic he would deliberately leave his two 'full' children with nothing rather than have all your children benefit. Unless there's a lot more to this that seems like quite a leap.

Probate takes a ridiculous amount of time so there's time to discuss this. And he's still grieving the loss of his mum (you too). and best wishes to you all.

This thread sheds a light on true human nature.

And not in a good way. , cannot believe the hard-nosedness of most on here.

The DM will be all over it within the next 24hrs.

Would your MIL have wanted it to go to charity, or expected it to go to you both / her grandchildren? Is there a reason your DH doesn't want to accept her money?

Agree you need to give your DH some time to process his grief and it's not a good idea to make a huge decision like this when bereaved - try to get him to postpone if you can.

YANBU, he shouldn't make a decision like this unilaterally.

Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but giving away substantial sums of money is a risky game for anyone who can't be certain they'll never need income based benefits or state financial support for care. Few of us are so rich that we know this will never be us. You don't sound like you are. I'm not. If you were to both lose your jobs next year, before considering any benefit entitlement, they would look at 'deprivation of capital'. This isn't my area so I don't know the specifics, but I do know transactions from a number of years earlier can be considered. Same with care costs, and realistically the rules for self-funding are going to get stricter, simply because we can't possibly carry on capping care costs at 23k with our ageing population. DH needs to understand that giving this money away now could come back to bite him and you quite hard in the future. Paying off the house now, otoh, could free up income to be donated on a regular basis, which isn't deprivation of capital, and time to spend doing charity work if it means he can reduce the time he needs to spend in paid employment.

Also, I've worked in charities both large and small, paid and volunteer. I wouldn't be presuming the tiny local volunteer reliant ones run out of people's kitchens are necessarily the best ones to give money to. No hard and fast rule. I would also not be considering staff salaries either. The romanticisation of volunteers and the idea that being paid money for taking a charity job is somehow grubby is completely unhelpful to charities. There are some charity jobs that are best done by someone who believes in the cause and isn't there for the money. There are others better done by people with dispassionate expertise who are there because they're getting paid, not because they're hugely committed to cat welfare or whatever. I have worked in more than one charity where they desperately needed guidance from someone in the latter category, but were too short sighted and arrogant to accept this. For a lot of voluntary sector jobs, there simply isn't a pool of people out there with the necessary expertise waiting to volunteer their time. You either pay someone to do the work or it doesn't get done. We have enough trouble filling the paid posts in my area, actually.

When dh's grandmother died she left him £1000. I suggested he buy something nice to remember her with as we didn't need the money. He was horrified! He did not want the money. He didn't want to think about the money. He wanted the money gone. We used it to overpay on our (then massive) mortgage as it was then "lost" in the enormousness of the mortgage. And agreed never to speak of it again.

I suspect this is what your Dh is doing - he doesn't want to think about it (as he equates it with his mother being dead) so thinks that if he just writes a socking big cheque for cancer research (or whoever) then it will be gone forever and he need never think of it again.

I'd suggest two things. 1. Trying to encourage him to shove it in an account somewhere where he doesn't have to think about it for 6 months. Let him forget about it that way. 2. If he is still going on about charity then suggest he finds a way of benefitting someone who helps with whatever it was that your MIL died of. For example a grant for a medical researcher. Make it clear that donating to charity - if done in a way that will help others in the same position as your MIL - will involve lots and lots of thinking.

FWIW in my marriage we have always shared all money. That was something that we agreed before we married. It is an absolute pillar of our marriage. The phrase "it's my money and not yours" would be basically taking an axe to everything we have built - together - for the last 16 years.

I'd be upset at your DP not discussing the issue with me.

Perhaps you could remind him that you and his mother's generation lived at a time when they could expect to enjoy a better standard of living than their parents. This generation can fully expect NOT to enjoy as good a standard of living as their parents because of the housing issue and having to self fund their education.

It is his inheritance, not a joint inheritance.

However, it's madness to not pay off the mortgage. At least get him to do that (and any other debts) and then donate the rest to charity if he insists.

I'd be annoyed too. I've recently inherited some money because my father died, and once his flat is sold I will be paying off the mortgage as first priority.

Probate can be quite quick, it came through for me in 5 weeks.

Off topic slightly but I volunteer for a national charity and they do an amazing job. They're a bit inefficient about turning lights off and have too many meetings but the paid staff genuinely care and work very hard to help their clients. Also because of government cutbacks they regularly help people that aren't part of their target group.

Some charities are corrupt or have forgotten what they're about but not all of them!

If this happened to me, I'd admire my dp but probably resent him if he decided without discussing it with me first, so it's about respect as well as money. If the positions were reversed he'd probably support me 100% because he's lost both his parents and would want to help with the grieving process.

I can't believe the lack of compassion for the DH in this thread. I hope that this is a case of a few extreme responses at the beginning leading to a typical herd reaction and a fear of saying something different. The thought that this is actually representative of human nature is truly horrifying.

I think your DH is grieving. Things can seem stark, definite and a sense of 'emotional truth' can be unusually powerful. It can be hard to recognise that this is because of emotions that are not just heightened, or unusually accessible but in part peculiar to the grieving process. His feelings and ideas are likely to change, given six months or a year.

I also think he is behaving like someone much richer than he is. This kind of largesse is for billionaires but, because he's never been any sort of 'rich' before, he can't tell the difference between very different shades of wealth.

In your position I'd ask if he would wait a year, then make a decision. He's grieving, he doesn't have to do everything at once now. It's a good idea to give himself some time, space and care, pace himself and not feel rushed.

In the meantime, I'd be putting together some financial facts and proposals. Paying off your mortgage would release revenue monthly and give you a real security and freedom - life changing in the context of an 'ordinary' life.

In particular, I find it mad that anyone would pay mortgage interest if they didn't have to - that's giving away money, to a bank, for nothing tangible in return. Why pay many thousands more than house is worth, servicing a debt, when you could choose to keep all your income to spend on real things? The 'charitable beneficiary' there is the bank (yes I know their charges are legit but it feels like giving money away and is if you don't have to). Pay the interest to a charity instead if you like AND you own the house.

Then get some quotes for repairs. They may be substantial. Get your house valued, as is, versus in good condition.

His conscience is strong, he's right that others are worse off. It's great that he'd like to help. He can. But, doing so driven by grief, guilt and without concern for his family and relationships - at a time when he doesn't have quiet mental space available to evaluate the consequences - is not a sensible idea.