Has anyone else been affected wrt inheritance due to being female?

[CatKisser]

Just had a frank chat with my mum about a few family issues. We are not an open family and rarely talk about these kinds of things.

My Grandad (her dad) owns a huge farm, a successful business, properties and a lot of land. According to my mother, he is "worth" over £12m.
She also said that my grandfather is quite open about the fact that the vast mojority of this will be passed down to his sons and grandsons. The two daughters will receive token financial amounts - I didn't ask how much.

Now, I've never experienced inheritance issues before. While I believe everyone is at perfect liberty to distribute their wealth as they seem fit, this seems truly appalling!! Is it commonplace? It can't just be me who thinks this is so wrong?

You're not the only one - the hares are female aristocrats who think they should inherit, rather than remote cousins because they have no brothers. I don't think titles are so much of an issue as an estate you grew up on and is your home going to some distant relation just because he's got a penis and you don't.

Mind you, there are plenty of people who grew up on landed estates and feel that that land is part of them, and have absolutely no claim on it whatsoever, including yours truly. But putting the issue of inherited privilege aside, I can see there are issues - you don't want to split up an estate (which may not be profitable to run in smaller units), but equally, why should other offspring be left with nothing? And as for a token financial amount, that definitely smacks of archaic attitudes about women being provided for by their husbands, rather than being deserving in their own right.

The current storyline on the Archers with the possible sale of Brookfield, and the family members being entitled to shares, which would mean there might not be enough to buy another farm is pertinent to this.

I don't think I've expressed myself very clearly (too tired to manage a coherent line of thought), but in summary, yes it is rather rubbish, particularly the "token" financial amount - but it could be the actual will when it comes down to it in the future would be different.

Yup. Inheritance is and has always been set up along strict gender lines. The males inherit property, females a small amount of money and some things. Males also inherit 'family' things, silver, that kind of thing. And yes, EBearhug has it, it was because, to people who have 'land', the boy must inherit it, to keep it in the family, while any girls should have married well enough into families where the same happens and therefore be provided for. Even more sadly, in some families, legally adopted children wont inherit the bulk of the estate.

I read some interesting pieces on inheritance - they say that it's one of the things that caused Ireland problems - that each farm got split up into successively smaller, uneconomic chunks because of equal inheritance.

I do remember being shocked by an ex-boyfriend's insistence that as the oldest he was entitled to inherit virtually everything from his parents, despite having younger siblings though, my family would never do that.

Inheritance rights get very wierd - isn't it the case that you can't disinherit your children in France? And I seem to remember that there was something odd about the inheritance laws of Kent as opposed to the rest of the country (obviously in the 000s not recently).

i don't know much about farming at all, but i can remember hearing a piece on farming today earlier this year about farmers still favouring sons, or farmers saying "i have no one to inherit the farm; i only have daughters"

but that may also reflect which children are interested in continuing the farm, and it wouldn't surprise me if that were linked to gender stereotyping and socialisation from a very young age

In 2012 apparently there were 23,000 female farmers in the UK, and the number is rising.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20490789

Not far from where I leave two daughters are now running the farm as their father is winding down.

live, not leave.

I've come across that attitude in farming families. My ex's dad is a farmer, and the assumption is that his son (who has a twin sister) will of course inherit.

On a much more minor level, it really pissed my mum off that, when my grandmother died, the bank and accountant who were handling the will (which was complicated, not because it was particularly a lot of money but because my gran wanted to be scrupulously fair) fucked up. There were several bits of money that all had to be split five ways between me and my cousins, and they rounded up in favour of the 'Mr' rather than the 'Ms' each time.

I suppose if we'd been rolling in money it'd have made quite a difference, though as it was it was just offensive.

Thanks for these replies and the great article on the "Hares."
Part of my annoyance with this situation is that my younger sister has always expressed a desire to go into farming - she's managed to get herself onto a great farming apprenticeship. But this is apparently irrelevant in regards to the inheritance situation.
Actually, my grandad is not a nice person has not time for me because I am fat, therefore lazy, undisciplined and unmotivated so I don't feel annoyed on my behalf. Just seems such a wrong way to do things.

Jeanne, that's inexcusable!

I know.

It is worth watching out for in general - not just with inheritance. My friend has just found that, despite opening an account as the first named holder, once she added her male partner, they started treating him as first named holder. Now, sometimes you get extra perks for being a first named holder, so it does actually matter!

I really don't trust banks very much with this sort of thing.

It was very funny, though, to see my mum taking the accountant down by explaining the very simple maths verrrry slooooowly to him until he clocked that it was an issue.

I wouldn't have said so, but at the weekend I found that my family had a big inheritance females versus males dustup in the past (a good three generations ago), apparently all based on a male member of the family believing that women shouldn't inherit shares with the result that a control of a large company went to the sons and brothers, with the sisters supposedly being 'looked after' with cash by one of them - who decided he'd rather hang on to it all. All fantastically Fanny Dashwood, 'I cannot see how they will spend the half of it' etc. One woman did OK because she had married a man with a good income, though from a modest background himself. Two others really struggled. I know there are some distant cousins of mine who are fairly loaded but to be fair, who knows, that may be from their own efforts, money goes easier than it comes after all.

the NFU got its first ever female elected senior office holder earlier this year - the deputy president Minette Batters

I feel guilty for not having voted when my NFU papers came through now...

I went to an interesting talk at MERL a couple of years or so back, on International Women's Day. It was about the history of women and the professionalisation of farmin, and the general theme was that there were quite a few women in agriculture from the late 19th century, and they did go on university and college courses - but there was a gender division, and women were more accepted in horticulture, poultry and dairy than more manly things like beef, pigs and wheat and barley. Because no farmer's wife (women not being seen as farmers in their own right) has ever dealt with large animals or heaved bales/sheaves of straw about or anything... or at least, it's not often acknowledged that of course women have done and do all these things, but remain seen as incapable of it.

Not that it's directly relevant to inheritance - I was just reminded of it, and it is relevant to sexist attitudes in agriculture and inheritances, because it's an area where it's particularly noticeable., as land is more visible to the outside world than bank accounts.

Yes it's commonplace. Eldest boy is the favoured one. Even if the eldest is a girl and has to do more than their fair share to help raise the family.
Leads to an intitutionalized narcissistic family structure passed down for generations.
My advice, get out of there, be polite, but build your own life as all you will get in return is the 'family narrative drilled into and the subtle threat of rejection.
Don't engage with it, accept it for what it is (and yes it's unfair) and move on.
I have seen the damage it has done to my own mother and how it has affected her relationships.
Personally I'm qualified with a BA Hons in counselling and psychotherapy, it's messed up, and not your fault.
Make the best of your own life and cut the links to trauma so as to avoid such toxic and unnecessary invasive interruptions in your own future children's life.
Anyone who tries to hold together any kind of illusion of the notion that such unequal and absurd 'family values are acceptable will pay the price of twisting their own reality, with little to no recompense.
Be polite. Move on and leave the fools to squabble like parasitic vultures over the rotting corpse of family values with no real substance or tangible cohesion above and beyond the threat of rejection.

Zombie thread from October 2014.

@KimikosNightmare

Zombie thread from October 2014.

Indeed it is.

Interesting thread though, and interesting that in the great FWR divide, this thread was assigned to the S&G topic, even though it’s nothing to do with that issue per se. But everything to do with women being treated as second class citizens because of our sex.

Almost as though sex based oppression is indeed an actual thing. And as though the point of feminism in general should be to acknowledge and fight against that.

We are. And it's one of the baffling parts of TRA activism for me that peerages are still male children only (some exceptions) and the Masons men only - both will allow TW as members/beneficiaries because they see them as men. Neither will allow TM. Both permitted. TRAs never object. I can see no good reason why TW should be allowed in single sex spaces such as refuges and prisons but I would cheerfully back a TM for a peerage or membership of the Masons since I would see no good reason to exclude them. It's almost as though we live in a patriarchy populated by those who can tell the difference between men and women.

sex based oppression is indeed an actual thing. And ... the point of feminism in general should be to acknowledge and fight against that.

Hear, hear.

I have watched these boards for a long time.
I have married in to farming- my husbands family run and own some of what we farm.

Attitudes to inheritance in farming vary from family to family. Here are some I have heard

-lots of children only 2 sons inherited any land or significant money the 2 sons then argued that much about how much each got that they then had to sell some to pay the lawyers. Lawyers got more than any sister- brothers still don’t speak.

• women not considered in inheritance as they married in and should be cared for by husbands family- this has happened to my MIL. There is a particular issue with bachelor farmers doing this They get nothing- some next generations have a settle up to make sure there sister isn’t disinherited some don’t.

• not having more than 2 children as you won’t be able to split the farm in to more than 2 successful businesses

• most people consider that girls can farm but there are a lot of attitudes that hinder them in the industry. Whenever a rep comes on farm he asks for husband or father. People who want to hire a stockman. The view that farmers wives just bake all day/ look after children- no where near enough understanding of what a farmers wife / partner does. Doing the books paperwork, feeding young stock and stock jobs. Dealing with deliveries or getting parts. Negotiating inputs, staff, tax, paye, inspections. Quite often running a holiday let or side business. Working off farm, looking after the kids and the rest. Quite often the brains of the operation is the woman.

Farms often struggle to pay family members full wages, it’s an asset rich cash poor industry. Inheritance is often seen as a way of settling up for a lifetimes work. Lots of people have the view that you should farm as if you will live forever as what you are doing to the land will impact the success of your children. Often money goes towards buying sheds, machinery or land. It’s a hard but very rewarding life when it’s going well. I am challenging attitudes where I can and we will make sure the inheritance between our 2 kids will be fair. Both of them can go farming but I will encourage them to look at other things and get a degree or training first.

It’s normal in farming families, and aristos as PP said

The problem when your asset is land is if you carve it up equally, the asset is lost - it ceases to be a viable business.

Obviously it should now be the eldest child by default

This happened in my family. My mother has one unmarried sister, and when her parents grew old and needed help, this sister moved back to the family home to care for them. When they died, quite a few years later, they left her absolutely nothing, because it all went to the eldest brother. I understand leaving him the farmland, as splitting up the land between the siblings wouldn't have left anyone with enough to do much with, but the fact that she didn't even get a share in the house she lived in seemed awful to me, and I was a little girl at the time. It's not just practicality for farmers, it's patriarchy too.

As an added bonus of unfairness, the brother who had been managing the farmland when my grandparents were too old to do it was the second son. He didn't get any of it either! Eldest son had a professional job in the city and didn't really need it...