This is super common right in inheritances....? Spinoff.

[Anonymous]

He could have provided for all his children in his will. He chose not to.

Speaks of the man that he was, unkind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It may be there just wasn't a will. When someone dies without a will, whatever assets whether money or house or anything else is left, it automatically goes to the spouse unless they specifically have separate property or bank accounts where the other spouse's name isn't on it. Dad should have made a will if he wanted to make sure that all the kids were taken care of.

This isn’t accurate. Laws vary by state. This is why trusts and estates lawyers exist. It gets complicated. In FL for example, if you die intestate and spouse is not on the deed, property passes to the children, while the spouse has a living will, which allows spouse to stay in the home until death. Kids can’t sell step-mother’s home out from under her, and she doesn’t own the asset.

[Anonymous]

Apparently I’m the contrarian.

If the kids from previous marriages are grown (which is implied by the age difference with last wife), then father has provided resources to those children already. So has provided them housing, expenses, college tuition, and some help with launching. If he dies while still having minor children, providing equally means that he leaves funds to get those minor children launched, and then thinking about leaving funds to all his kids.

If the estate is $200,000 and child is 5 yo at time of death, unlikely anything left to hand out at the end. If the estate is $10M, there should be. But it’s not as easy as saying everything should be divided equally at his death.

I’m in a first marriage, but we have a large age gap with our kids, and our estate holds all major inheritance until youngest turns 25, and the bulk at 35. This means that the oldest won’t get it until they are 40 and 50, respectively. We feel sort of bad about that, but felt that was the best of all options.

[Anonymous]

It happens a lot, but so does suing and usually biologically children who are not estranged, even sometimes those who are, do have a claim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep this is the only way I've seen it happen in divorced families.

The worst in when the mom (who had died) was the breadwinner or had a lot of inheritance from her family. Her biological kids get nothing and the dad's new wife and child get all her money. At the time of mom's death, her will specified that everything went to her husband and then to kids after his death. But he remarried and had more kids who got everything. My mom didn't even get her mom's engagement ring or some other heirlooms from her grandparents that she knows her mom would have wanted her to have.

Skip the spouse and give to bio kids.

You have to set up an estate plan / will to do this, though. Default is that everything goes to your spouse. And also, do you not want to favor your spouse over your child?

I've thought about this a bit. We are equal breadwinners. I die young, I want my money to go to my spouse first, so he can have a good retirement (even if he remarries). Really, I want him to have whatever he needs & wants. But when he passes, I want "my portion" of whatever was left of my estate to go directly to my child, or at least for my child to get a fair deal. So far I've made my wishes known and told my husband it is on him to do a prenup / estate plan if he ever remarries. He's a good guy, and I trust he'll do it, but...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why married people should take note. Put your assets in a trust to benefit your spouse, then kids when spouse dies. Then even if one remarries, they can’t cut they first kids out. With a 50% divorce rate, it’s naive to think it could never happen to your marriage.

So is each person in the marriage meant to have their own trust? We put our assets in a trust, but we are co-owners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:extremely common. this is why women need to get the best divorce settlement they can including college tuition and life insurance to the extent possible.

If the children are left with nothing, that’s also on the Mom — absent a prenup, the ex-wife should have gotten half the assets accumulated during marriage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is partly the reason broken families are horrible. It is always the kids from the previous marriage that get the short end of the stick while the "new family" doesn't suffer at all.

My view too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:extremely common. this is why women need to get the best divorce settlement they can including college tuition and life insurance to the extent possible.

If the children are left with nothing, that’s also on the Mom — absent a prenup, the ex-wife should have gotten half the assets accumulated during marriage.

My father divorced my mother just over 40 years ago when she was pregnant with me and had my preschool brother and sister to take care of as well. In the divorce, she was awarded the house they'd paid $80K for and reasonable child and spousal support. Dad was fairly generous with college, as per the divorce decree. My mom worked in family-friendly jobs as we were growing up, but never made a fortune. She gets a small pension in retirement now. Dad remarried but never had additional kids, so I would assume he'll leave us something in his will. Who knows? Mom stayed in the family home, the payments and taxes were manageable for her. She had boyfriends but never remarried. The house is in Marin County, CA and is worth over $1.5MM today, which will go to my siblings and me at some point.

We're OK, and I imagine this is a similar story for many.

[Anonymous]

We have wills and trusts in place that would prevent something like that from happening if one of us was to die and remarry. The trusts also keep the money in the family if one of our kids was to get divorced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why married people should take note. Put your assets in a trust to benefit your spouse, then kids when spouse dies. Then even if one remarries, they can’t cut they first kids out. With a 50% divorce rate, it’s naive to think it could never happen to your marriage.

So is each person in the marriage meant to have their own trust? We put our assets in a trust, but we are co-owners.

We have a joint trust as well, so if one of us dies the spouse inherits, and then when spouse dies the kids get the remainder. So say if I died and my spouse remarried, any assets he accumulated after my death that were not included in the trust, he could leave to whoever he wants, but he doesn’t outright get our joint assets to do with what he wanted. Both of us would need to disband the trust, say if we decided to get divorced. But if one of us dies our kids are protected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apparently I’m the contrarian.

If the kids from previous marriages are grown (which is implied by the age difference with last wife), then father has provided resources to those children already. So has provided them housing, expenses, college tuition, and some help with launching. If he dies while still having minor children, providing equally means that he leaves funds to get those minor children launched, and then thinking about leaving funds to all his kids.

If the estate is $200,000 and child is 5 yo at time of death, unlikely anything left to hand out at the end. If the estate is $10M, there should be. But it’s not as easy as saying everything should be divided equally at his death.

I’m in a first marriage, but we have a large age gap with our kids, and our estate holds all major inheritance until youngest turns 25, and the bulk at 35. This means that the oldest won’t get it until they are 40 and 50, respectively. We feel sort of bad about that, but felt that was the best of all options.

This is my perspective as well. It entirely depends on the age of the offspring and whether or not they have been successfully launched (including having funds for college.) My husband's older kids from a previous marriage are fully launched and had college educations provided for them. They will get an equal share of my husband's inheritance from his family line (split between all kids, none for me) when/if he gets any (but he expects to), but our joint assets are joint will be needed to provide for whichever of us outlives the other, as well as our minor children. It is definitely complicated with blended families. We currently (pre-inheritance from family) deal with this through a separate insurance policy which benefits the older kids, but those become more expensive over time and we'll need to adjust how it is handled in another 5-10 years (and at the end of the day, insurance is to provide care for dependents).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It happens a lot, but so does suing and usually biologically children who are not estranged, even sometimes those who are, do have a claim.

Unless you're a lawyer, most people never go through something like this, thus have no idea how to navigate it. Especially when the parent dies suddenly. Oh, go hire a lawyer, right? Sure, and odds are a random lawyer will just conspire to loot the estate with their country club buddy on the other side(s). Been there, done that.

[Anonymous]

How does it compare to same scenario where wife as remarried? My cousin divorced her husband of more than 25 years over this--she had a one plus she adopted her grandchild whose mother died at 26. She and her second husband (first was also deceased after they divorced, in an accident when he was relatively young) had one child. Second husband balked at inheritance for her kids, so she divorced, got a settlement as a way to protect their interests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why married people should take note. Put your assets in a trust to benefit your spouse, then kids when spouse dies. Then even if one remarries, they can’t cut they first kids out. With a 50% divorce rate, it’s naive to think it could never happen to your marriage.

Or, after death of one spouse even if first marriage was fine.