Reply to Is it reasonable to ask your parents what your inheritance expectations should be?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think it's tacky & tasteless to ask your own parents other than being sure that they have a will, POAs, living wills, etc., as desired.

What you tell your kids is different.  And so, in my case, when I did what I describe above, my parents shared with me their will & their plans (everything to my brother & me equally), and then later when they got closer to needing more help, got into details of what they had & where (a bit of a surprise how much it was).

And then when they were even more infirm, for ease in helping them & in administering affairs, I became joint owner on 2 bank accounts, credit card, etc., that were used for their (not my) things.

On their death, of course, the joint accounts passed to me outside the will but my brother & I get along and all was disclosed and accounted for &c., in contrast to the sad story about someone above's sister changing ownership, etc.

We are lucky.  Our parents raised us well, we have our issues and disagreements but we also have/had a sense of being fair with each other that apparently is missing often.

Even knowing what the potential was for our inheritance, we also knew that it could suffer investment losses, could be eaten up in health & elder care, etc., so we planned with no expectation (and with an asterisk second column just in case).

Now, unfortunately, we know the answer: my father died in 2010, my mother last December, and my brother and I have more $ than we ever counted on.  I retired 2 years early, we can continue to live our lives as we have (no Bentleys or new yachts) but things are very secure.  It's nice but it's balanced by the void of missing our parents now that we are orphans at age 58 and 55, and you can't put a dollar value on that sense of loss.

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