Reply to Large early inheritance to only 1 of 3 siblings?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s not an “inheritance” if the parents are still alive.

I have spent different amounts on my adult kids at various times according to what was needed at the time. They went to very different types of colleges, so tuitions were different, as were their living expenses. We contributed different amounts for wedding expenses  because there was almost 10 years between weddings, so inflation had occurred.

In my family of origin, my youngest sibling had a car at college, no college loans, and lots of extra expenses paid by my parents while I did not have a car, had loans, and I worked during the school year to pay my extra expenses. Why the difference? Well, partially because my parents no longer had kids at home so they didn’t really need the extra car anymore and partly because their financial circumstances had improved by that time. I didn’t expect them to cough up an equivalent amount of money for me- I was working and married and taking care of myself by then and understood that they could spend their money any way that they pleased. It never would have occurred to me to think that I was entitled to more because they now had more.

I grew up hearing “Life is not fair” from people around me.  Are kids growing up hearing “Life is fair, and when it’s not, make sure you demand fairness” today?
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Of course life is not fair, but the question is not is life fair. It’s as adult children do your parents treat you and your sibling fairly when your circumstances are similar? You are answering the question you want to answer, not the question OP is posing. The situation in college you describe doesn’t sound like unfair parenting. Honestly, it sounds like your parents were trying to put a bunch of kids through college and get by. My mother is the oldest of six and the difference between her childhood and her youngest sibling’s childhood is very different. Something like what you or my mom experienced is not what the OP is talking about. Imagine yourself in your 40s with two kids and your closest in age sibling, also with two kids, and your parents say “we’re very comfortable now and we’re going to give your sister $1 million so she can be more comfortable too.” That’s the scenario. The scenario is not “we’re going to give your sister our old Pontiac so she can more easily go back and forth between UW-Madison and DC.”[/quote]

Did they hand her a check for $1 million, or did they help her to buy a house worth $1 million so she could live near where she works at a job that they see as helping others? These are very different scenarios. And have they never done anything at all to help you in your adult life?

Also, if you are the OP, would you mind identifying yourself as such when you are posting? It gets confusing when some posts sound like they are possibly the OP posting but it’s not clear whether or not it actually is the OP. Thank you. 
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