Inheritance Question

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about if one 'adult child' is nearly sixty, able bodied and has an able bodied wife but has made a career out of being a parasite off of the parents while the other two siblings have earned their own way and lived within their means? This is our situation. The Golden Child has been milking my parents for money for twenty years already with no end in sight. He thinks the estate should be divided evenly three ways because the gifts he has received already are irrelevant. He appears to think that he is simply more deserving and entitled to generous 'gifts' than anyone else is.

My parents really tried to be as equal/equitable as possible with us and that's been a good guide for me. I think if I were in this situation, I might help out the (golden) child, but would explain at the second ask that this gift and any going forward would be deducted from any share they may have of the inheritance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sure. I would leave my child, who has some health issues, a lot more than the one who doesn't.

Also, I would consider their life circumstances outside of health.

You do understand your other child could also develop health issues or have a child who develops health issues, right?

[Anonymous]

I know a family where the siblings didn’t get along well. Sibling 1 asked parents to just leave the house to sibling 2, even though it resulted in an unequal split that benefited sibling 2. Sibling 1 didn’t want to deal with sharing property, and it has worked out well for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here... would you consider financial situations? Sibling A has made no effort to save and has made many life decisions that have put them in a lesser financial situation (though far from destitute). Sibling B makes a decent income (but not extravagant) but lives very frugally and has saved since the first job out of college when they made a very meager salary.

Sibling A is also child free and Sibling B is not.

Curious the thoughts on this?

My mom does. I am the frugal one who made less money, but is in great shape financially. I shall be punished. Sister made a lot of money and might as well throw it all out the window for how wasteful she is. Mom will be rewarding her for being totally irresponsible and is already giving her handouts galore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here... would you consider financial situations? Sibling A has made no effort to save and has made many life decisions that have put them in a lesser financial situation (though far from destitute). Sibling B makes a decent income (but not extravagant) but lives very frugally and has saved since the first job out of college when they made a very meager salary.

Sibling A is also child free and Sibling B is not.

Curious the thoughts on this?

I'm going to guess you are Sibling B, as it sounds like you don't think Sibling A deserves more?

In this situation I think it should be 50/50, but I don't see anything wrong with giving some to the grandkids. My grandfather passed away and gave 30% to my mom, 30% to my aunt, 10% to me, 10% to cousin a, 10% to cousin b. I thought this worked out ok. Technically my aunts side "got more" but it was fair overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I think it's odd that there's not specific money set aside for our child, but I don't really know how this works. I kind of thought they'd set aside $X for the one grandchild and split the rest evenly between siblings. Instead they said they were going to just do 50/50; fine, we can set money aside for our DC. But now they are going back and wanting to revise it to not make the split equal and give more to the sibling without a child.

I see how couples decide to split assets all the time in my career. It is VERY rare for money to be left directly to grandchildren amongst my clients. The assumption most of them make is that by leaving it to their children, the grandchildren will then benefit. A lot assume it will be used for college, weddings, etc. anyway and honestly, it often does. It also gets complicated to leave money directly to a minor/young person. I've also seen where a 20 year old gambled away a huge inheritance. Sure you can set up a trust, but they're complex, annoying, and not even foolproof against the money getting blown. And because of this mindset, 50/50 (or evenly, depending on number of children) is how the vast majority divide up their assets. No parent wants to start playing the game of which child deserves more or less based on success or life choices.

Yeah this. I have the only grandchildren, but my parents never considered leaving money separately for them. But my share will go into a pot of money that will need to be spent on their college education, so of course it will probably end up helping them. Leaving money to just then sounds confusing... don't think they will have the wisdom as teens or young adults to use it wisely.

[Anonymous]

My sibling has more kids than me and I assume my parents will leave more money to them. I guess I don’t see why the math should be generation specific. Dividing by grandchildren seems as legitimate as dividing by children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I think it's odd that there's not specific money set aside for our child, but I don't really know how this works. I kind of thought they'd set aside $X for the one grandchild and split the rest evenly between siblings. Instead they said they were going to just do 50/50; fine, we can set money aside for our DC. But now they are going back and wanting to revise it to not make the split equal and give more to the sibling without a child.

I see how couples decide to split assets all the time in my career. It is VERY rare for money to be left directly to grandchildren amongst my clients. The assumption most of them make is that by leaving it to their children, the grandchildren will then benefit. A lot assume it will be used for college, weddings, etc. anyway and honestly, it often does. It also gets complicated to leave money directly to a minor/young person. I've also seen where a 20 year old gambled away a huge inheritance. Sure you can set up a trust, but they're complex, annoying, and not even foolproof against the money getting blown. And because of this mindset, 50/50 (or evenly, depending on number of children) is how the vast majority divide up their assets. No parent wants to start playing the game of which child deserves more or less based on success or life choices.

Yeah this. I have the only grandchildren, but my parents never considered leaving money separately for them. But my share will go into a pot of money that will need to be spent on their college education, so of course it will probably end up helping them. Leaving money to just then sounds confusing... don't think they will have the wisdom as teens or young adults to use it wisely.

I'm the pp above you, my grandpa passed away when the youngest of us grandkids were 29...

[Anonymous]

In my situation, Sibling A is wealthy and helped my parent out financially from time to time, and opted out of receiving any inheritance. Sibling B makes about $110K but does not have a spouse or substantial retirement savings, other than a bit of home equity. I'm in the middle with a couple million in retirement savings and a more secure job. My parent asked me about directing their entire inheritance of about $250K to Sibling B, because they wanted B to have more security. I said of course, no problem, its your money. But in my case, we all love and care for each other so there are no resentments (even though another $125K would've been nice). It all depends on the family circumstances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sibling has more kids than me and I assume my parents will leave more money to them. I guess I don’t see why the math should be generation specific. Dividing by grandchildren seems as legitimate as dividing by children.

We had a situation where a childless aunt had a will that left her estate equally to her living siblings. The aunt updated it immediately after one of her siblings died, even though that sibling had an extremely close relationship to her, as did that sibling's children among all the nephews and nieces. There was a lot of resentment because the aunt was already in her 80's, and the estate was relatively fairly substantial. The aunt thought this was the fairest approach, but the children of the deceased sibling felt discounted and hurt. Of course the aunt died within a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here... would you consider financial situations? Sibling A has made no effort to save and has made many life decisions that have put them in a lesser financial situation (though far from destitute). Sibling B makes a decent income (but not extravagant) but lives very frugally and has saved since the first job out of college when they made a very meager salary.

Sibling A is also child free and Sibling B is not.

Curious the thoughts on this?

If Sibling A has no children and Sibling B does have children, it sounds like Sibling B is patting themselves on the back for being a parent, and thus needing to have different financial plans than Sibling A when the choice to have children is not a better or more correct choice than remaining childfree, but merely a personal preference.

My guess is that OP is Sibling B and is angling for more of the inheritance for OP's children and is using Sibling A's financial situation as justification for why the grandparents should give more money to B for the grandkids.

Nope. Should be 50/50. Sibling B then could give their kids any potion of their 50% share if they wish. Why would it come from sibling A’s 50% share? They are not sibling A’s kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here... would you consider financial situations? Sibling A has made no effort to save and has made many life decisions that have put them in a lesser financial situation (though far from destitute). Sibling B makes a decent income (but not extravagant) but lives very frugally and has saved since the first job out of college when they made a very meager salary.

Sibling A is also child free and Sibling B is not.

Curious the thoughts on this?

If Sibling A has no children and Sibling B does have children, it sounds like Sibling B is patting themselves on the back for being a parent, and thus needing to have different financial plans than Sibling A when the choice to have children is not a better or more correct choice than remaining childfree, but merely a personal preference.

My guess is that OP is Sibling B and is angling for more of the inheritance for OP's children and is using Sibling A's financial situation as justification for why the grandparents should give more money to B for the grandkids.

Nope. Should be 50/50. Sibling B then could give their kids any potion of their 50% share if they wish. Why would it come from sibling A’s 50% share? They are not sibling A’s kids.

Op here. We’d be totally fine with that and what we told was going to be the case and now they’re changing to give sibling A more

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here... would you consider financial situations? Sibling A has made no effort to save and has made many life decisions that have put them in a lesser financial situation (though far from destitute). Sibling B makes a decent income (but not extravagant) but lives very frugally and has saved since the first job out of college when they made a very meager salary.

Sibling A is also child free and Sibling B is not.

Curious the thoughts on this?

If Sibling A has no children and Sibling B does have children, it sounds like Sibling B is patting themselves on the back for being a parent, and thus needing to have different financial plans than Sibling A when the choice to have children is not a better or more correct choice than remaining childfree, but merely a personal preference.

My guess is that OP is Sibling B and is angling for more of the inheritance for OP's children and is using Sibling A's financial situation as justification for why the grandparents should give more money to B for the grandkids.

Nope. Should be 50/50. Sibling B then could give their kids any potion of their 50% share if they wish. Why would it come from sibling A’s 50% share? They are not sibling A’s kids.

Op here. We’d be totally fine with that and what we told was going to be the case and now they’re changing to give sibling A more

I'm surprised they are having this conversation with you. What's more in % ? Variables can be life events that never happened for your sib like wedding+gift and 529 contributions for your child.

[Anonymous]

One of my siblings has less money and assets than the rest of us do, I would be genuinely happy and I would prefer that he receives a larger chunk of any inheritance left to us - I am doing okay and so are my other siblings, we don’t need the money as much as he does.

[Anonymous]

50/50 unless severe debilitating illness. My friend has an autistic brother who will get more since he works minimum wage jobs and the parents are well off. Friend will still get plenty and is not upset.