Reply to What do parents "owe" their adult children?

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[quote=Anonymous]I don't think it's possible to be 100% equal in the amount of funds gifts to the kids. If one child gets into an Ivy League, I think it makes sense that the parents would sacrifice to help the kid be able to go. If another sibling gets into the local state school and happens to earn a $10k/year scholarship on top of that, that will be a heck of a lot cheaper for the family, but that child isn't owed a compensatory pay off upon graduation just because his tuition cost less.

Or, for example - when I was in college, I aged out of being covered on my mom's health insurance, so I paid for my own plan via the university. But my youngest brother benefited from the cutoff moving up to age 26 under the Affordable Care Act. Do my parents owe my premiums back to me? No, of course not.

Gifting huge lump sums of cash is an odd practice, IMO, but if that is to be done, then I suppose it should be mostly even - perhaps each kid gets a big check for their birthday, or something like that.

The real challenge with keeping things "fair" is when family is bailing out some one in need. Family is meant to help each other, but it's a fine line between helping and enabling. It's easy for the parents to feel they're helping and for the siblings who are not in crisis to feel like it's an unfair act of enabling, or a payoff for bad behavior. I think in that case, the stable sibling should try to sympathize with their parents and their difficult situation they're in, and at the end of the day remember that this is their money, and it's not owed to you. [/quote]

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