Step Children and Wills / Inheritence

[Truffler1]

Just a question about how other people have structured their wills. My DH and I have been married for a year and have a baby due end of Dec. My husband has a 17 year old from a previous marriage who still lives in my husbands previous family home that my husband used to share with his first wife my step childs mother. Three years ago - before we were married with a baby on the way - my husband and I got the opportunity to buy our dream home. I had more equity from a previous marriage so we bought at 70% equity from me and 30% from him. As we are now married I see this to be 50/50 - my husband earns more and pays a bit more mortgage although it is interest only so the equity technically is the same.
We were discussing wills the other day and I was a bit dismayed that my husband was talking as though the property would be split equally between his son and our child if something happened to both of us. Although I now regard the property as 50 / 50 between us as we are married - the way I see it is that he would split his 50% between his two biological children equally and I am worried that I am expected to split my 50% equally between my biological child and his son. My parents and my husbands parents will both leave sums which we intend to use to pay off the mortgage and although I love my step child dearly I know my parents would not intend for half of what they leave to go to a step grand child over their biological grandchild. I tried to explain this to my husband in that if the roles were reversed and the step child were his - I am not sure he would be keen on leaving 50% of his estate to another mans child - especially as that child is already provided for by its mothers household. I do intend to split my 50% between my step son and my biological child - but I do not intend to leave if equally - maybe 10% 40%. What is more difficult is that my step son is financially aware and has made a few comments about how he stands to inherit and when we told him about the baby he was clearly aware of this having a financial impact - which my husband then said to him "don't worry it doesn't change anything with the house". I need to broach this with my husband but am really worried about his reaction as when I mentioned this previously he did not want to discuss it further. I just feel strongly that I would not leave an equal share to my step child over my own child. He spends 2 or 3 nights with us a month and our home is not his family home.

I don't think there's any very easy answers to that issue petra - if you rely on trust that your DP will honour your wishes even though they might be different from theirs there's a risk they won't. But even with the best lawyer drawing up a lifetime interest in a home, etc you will limit what you're really leaving to your DP, and their ability to adjust to changes that you couldn't possibly have foreseen - possibly over 50 or more years. They may outlive some of the children, one child may be disabled/ill and need money much more than others, the children may all be retired themselves and not really need money, but one of them has 4 children themselves who do, whilst another has none, etc, etc.

Overall I think if you're both pretty old, then it's viable to set something up where you can be sure your children will inherit what you want them to. But if you're quite young, I think you're better - if you can afford it - to leave something direct to your children directly, and accept that whatever you need to leave to your spouse to allow them to live reasonably (eg the joint home) is theirs and could go wherever they choose.

Putting a house in trust does not stop you having to use it to pay nursing home fees. As you say, if that were the case everyone would do it and the UK would be bankrupt like Greece.

If you are seen to have deliberately deprived yourself of assets then they can be seized anyway to pay for care home fees.

Petra we were not happy to do that yet because, as I said, we want to be able to sell the house, buy somewhere smaller and spend the excess in time, hence we will re-visit at that point.
We did do the wills with a lawyer. There's no way round it until we're ready to commit to how much we leave the DC.
If I died, I would hate DH to be skirt because half the house was DS's. I'm happy for him to spend as much as he needs and vice versa.

I agree with pp saying get grandparents to leave directly to grandchildren. My Stepmother has no children. I do not expect to see any inheritance despite my father having died with a mirror will in place leaving half their joint estate to his DC. I am not sure there is a full proof legal way to deal with your situation fairly if you are married and this is why I would never remarry if anything happened to my DH. Spouses always take precedence over the marital home no matter what the will says, so if this is really concerning you I would suggest building up assets independent of your residence. You could leave your pension direct to your son to even things out.

Also since nursing home costs have been brought up, you can buy an insurance policy to deal with this.

Life is all so much simpler if no-one has any money. Bit weird that your children are focussed on this so hopefully you both live so long that any inheritance will be irrelevant to them.

I find it odd that teenage children are asking what they will inherit, or have any idea of it.

I am 47 and have no clue what my parents might leave me (but I am nc with them so I expect it is zero). I know my grandmother has left me all her jewellery but as she is now gaga and my father has POA I expect that has all been disposed of.

My dss did ask once, a year or so ago "if you both die, do I get this house then" - but I felt it was more of a vague "isn't that interesting" question than anything else. I went into great detail explaining about wills, dying without a will, how we own the house.....but he lost interest after about thirty seconds as does his father when I talk about money.

Melon we walk past a cemetery quite often and my DC have been designing my tombstone since they were 6 and 7

I am a step child. My dad has three previous children, plus one child with his partner.

I will inherit 1/4 of my dad's 50% share of the house. My half sister will inherit her mum's 50%, plus 1/4 of her dad's 50%.

I see this as being completely fair and would never think for a second that I should get anything from my half sister's mum. I think it's the normal way to do things.

PS I only know that because I become my half sister's guardian in the event of her parents' death, so it was gone over in all of those discussions.

My DH agreed readily that our assets would be split between all 4 children including the one that isn't biologically his. She was only 3 when we got together and will not inherit via her Dad (no money at all). If it were likely that she were to inherit through her Dad I would have welcomed an alternative split tbh.

If you hold the house as joint tenants and one of you died, the house will not form part of the estate of the deceased party and the surviving tenant will automatically own the entire house. So if you die the house goes to your DH who can then do what he likes with it. You need to be tenants in common to be able to leave your share of the property in your will.

I made that point up thread, but it got a bit lost.

Hopefully solicitors are explaining this to people.

Melon I work for the department that works out what people have to pay towards their fees. Not many people do it because not many people seem to think that far ahead, but it's actually very difficult to prove deprivation. As long as it's done when there is no anticipation of care needs, it is a loophole. Another loophole is putting assets (well in advance) into bonds with life assurance attached as we can't touch them either!

Rules on taking value of home to pay care home fees are changing in 2016. Can't remember the month it takes effect. The new rules will have a disregard of just over £100k for the value of a property when assessing assets which can be used to pay fees. That is, a property valued at less than this amount will not be taken into account at all and only the value over this amount will be taken for more expensive properties.

It's just been announced that the care cap is being delayed to 2020! Very good news for finance assessment officers but bad news for self funding residents.

Did I read that right - you're on interest only, relying on inheritance to pay the balance? How can you even be sure you'd get anything?

Are you sure you are not going to have any further children because that could really change things with you step son having considerably more than his half siblings.

just wanted to say thank you to yellowdaisies for your response to my own post a bit earlier on here!

Seems the fairest way then is to consider it 50 / 50 and we both leave our half to each other until their passing and we pre-agree the split between DSS and our child-to-be before hand. I am going to suggest the 50 / 50 split between his two bio children and the majority of my share to my child-to-be with a token or cash payment left to my DSS (if there is anything left after care etc although we have a contingency for this eventuality. I would also feel that what we decided before should be upheld if either of us were to move on or re-marry.
Thank you for the feedback on this - I genuinely was worried I was going a bit crazy and turning into a wicked step mother as I simply wanted my share and my family money to pass to my own child directly. As it stands DSS will inherit more from the joint property than if his father had stayed single in his previous place.
Enough of thinking about being dead and thanks for the feedback all. ;-)

My situation is similar. I bought a house before I met my DH. This will go to my son only. If we buy a house together then that will be split 50/50 between the two boys but my husband may buy a place in his name and that will go to his son only. My friend has three children by three different dads. She owns half of the share in the house with her first husband and dad to child 1. She will get her dads half and a third of her mums. Child two and three will get a third of the half value (if that make sense). Sit down and have a conversation but if it was me then. The child you have together gets your half and a quarter of his half and his son gets a quarter. His son from the previous should get the entire house from the previous marriage. If your husband says no he wants your house splitting 50/50 then insist that your child gets a quarter of the house from a previous relationship. Only fair

Your husband has made secret plans to benefit his son at your expense.