I’ve been in both smooth and rough inheritance situations.
The rough was when my MIL died. She had lent significant money to one of her sons, who didn’t want to pay it back out of his share of the estate. Lawyers were involved. It was a mess.
When her uncle died, he left a very substantial estate. That one went surprisingly smoothly, even though the same heirs were involved. Part of the reason it went so well was that the trust department of a bank acted as executor. Also a couple of years before he died the uncle had each of the heirs to his apartment to see what possessions each wanted. When it came time to divide the stuff, there was a list that included almost everything of any real value.
When my mom died, my brother and I were co-executors. I did the lion’s share of the work, but I didn’t mind. I was really glad I had my brother to help with the decision making. The only surprise in my mom’s estate (not to my brother or me, but the others) was that instead of diving the estate into quarters, with one share for each of her 4 children, but in fifths, with the remaining share split evenly between her grandchildren.
At one point in their lives, a grandparent had left some money in the will directly to one of my parents. I had heard the story both ways – that it was my mom or my dad that was the beneficiary. However it was, the money came at a time when they really needed it, and they were honored to have been remembered in the estate.
The inheritance was a surprise to my nieces and nephews, all of whom were in a position where the money was either needed or came in really handy.
Only problem with that estate was a very minor tax issue.
Sure. When my grandmother died, the split among my father and his siblings was settled amicably. That’s the norm in my (admittedly limited) experience. (My mother was an only child and the sole inheritor when her mother died.)
Contrary to the OP’s assertion, I don’t “have stories about how when someone dies the family has this big battle over inheritance.”
All very easy in my family, for both of my parents. We didn’t have much to sort out; I did all the paperwork, which wasn’t difficult, and my brother and I sorted out the division of the residue perfectly amicably.
My Grandfather took advantage of being able to bequeath one time gifts to each of his children tax free before he died, everything else he sold to my father for a dollar. This ordained for the relatively comfortable life we all lead.
I believe my father will take it one step further as he has stated numerous times that before he leaves this world he wants each of his kids to have 3 two-family houses as insurance policies. This is perhaps one of the most salient pieces of evidence on why I respect him so.
I just recently inherited some money from a great-uncle. My mother, one of her cousins, and I were really the only ones who visited him, or helped him out in the last decade or so of his life, when he couldn’t travel anymore, and we helped him when he had to move into a nursing home. Mostly it was my mother and her cousin, and me just a little, mostly because I lived the closest, but I had a baby part of the time, and that made it hard. My mother and her cousin really did a lot of work and put forth a lot of effort.
This uncle had never married and had no children. He had some money, and he left it to my mother and her cousin, with a smaller amount to me. No one in the family complained. Everyone knew that the visits we had all made had been on our own dime, and anyone else could have done it, but other people lived further away, or were involved in things like my cousin who was in medical school, or my mother’s cousin who was going through chemo part of the time (she is fine now) and her sister, who had three children, and was also taking care of an elderly mother.
So I have a new car (my old one was a 1994), my son had lots of bonds that will mature either at his bar mitzvah or his high school graduation, and we’re getting a pinball machine. Also, all the credit cards are paid off.
I’m not even sure the whole family knows really that much about it. My mother’s brother says it barely covered putting up with the old fart, but he’s kind of a jackass. My brother, who lives all the way in California, and in no way could have gotten out here to do any visiting, is happy for me. But he makes more money than I do anyway.
It certainly helps when most people in the family are doing well financially and don’t really care about the money. My aunt got most of the money when her parents died because my mother is well off and didn’t want it. In exchange, my aunt sold off her parent’s house, belongings, and dealt with all the associated headaches so not one fight occurred.
On my father’s side, when his parents died, he was also well off, but my uncles and aunts less so. One uncle was a pain in the ass because he needed money, but my father didn’t, so he gave up his portion and let the remaining siblings split it, so again, so fights.
My mother-in-law recently passed away and my father-in-law was a financial trainwreck. We all kept track of our expenses for the funeral and lawyers to declare him bankrupt, then paid ourselves back after the house sold. He lives with us during the week, with the youngest sister during the weekends to give us a break and see his grandkids, and the middle sister manages the money for him to which he is always combative. We saw this as a fair and equitable division of labor. The only other issues we ran into were the sale of the items in the house, and not because anyone wanted anything in particular, because we let everyone have what they wanted. It was more the devotion of time each of us put in to dealing with selling and disposing of things. In my opinion, my wife and I did the majority of the runs to Goodwill, holding garage sales, etc. while the sisters always had excuses for why they couldn’t help due to other obligations. That pissed me off, but I would hardly call it a “major fight”. If there is any money left after my father-in-law dies, it will be split three ways among the daughters, and even then, we may refuse our portion and let them have it because they need the money more.
I would guess that no bitter feelings is the rule rather than the exception. It’s very easy to achieve in the simple case where a person has children and the money is left to them (after last person in a couple dies) in even shares. That’s what happened when my parents died. It wasn’t a life changing amount of money, but even if it had been I don’t see what reasonable basis I or my brother would have had to object to 50-50, and more distant relatives didn’t have any reasonable basis to object to the default setting of leaving the money to the kids, and I can’t imagine they did object.
Of course some people have unavoidable complications due to multiple marriages, step kids, live long enough to have lots of grand and great-grand kids but some of their own kids pre-decease them, never have any kids etc. A will can try to account for all that in advance but the probability escalates of something slipping through the cracks or anyway somebody thinking they got a raw deal. And some people create problems in their wills themselves favoring one child over another for what they might think valid reasons, but it’s seldom a good idea IMO. In general, of course an exception can always be imagined.
I only have one sibling, when my divorced mother died suddenly she had no will or funeral plans. Everything went smoothly other than us having no idea what we were doing. The actual division of money and property was completely amicable.
My best friend from childhood married a woman with two sisters. Their mom, a widow, died a few years back. He swears that her will named the three daughters and then said, in its entirety, “share and share alike.”
The issues in my mom’s family when my grandmother died were caused by spouses of the siblings, and not by the siblings themselves. My dad’s family - they don’t do “conflict.” Everyone just bottles everything up and seethes for all eternity. We kind of got screwed because if there ever were proper wills, nobody could find them, but that’s how my paternal grandparents would have wanted it (their favorites got the bulk), so…Whatever.
My folks have been keeping a list of who wants what and anything that might be a conflict has been settled amicably, so far. It was really more my mom’s expectations of what we might want that caused more conflict than competing interests in a certain item: For example, Mom’s not a huge jewelry person, but she has some nice rings. She was planning to give me a particular ring, but I think my SIL should have it - it’s more SIL’s style than mine, and it’s her birthstone. I asked for the ring that was smaller and could be more easily sized to my fingers. I think Mom mostly just wanted to give me the bigger one, but I’d never be able to wear it and I helped my dad pick out the smaller one, so I’m a bit more attached to it.
Stuff like that. I don’t anticipate any problems cropping up when the time actually comes.
When my grandmother passed away in January, the only person who nearly caused any trouble was the funeral director. My grandmom had indicated her preferences many years before, but the director tried to talk my mother and sisters into a more elaborate service. They all said “No! Mother said SHORT and closed casket. She’ll come after us if we don’t do what she said.”
She made it clear who got what dishes (I got the Franciscan Apple, my cousin the good china), furniture, etc. She’d already given the grandkids land that’s in trust for our parents’ lifetime, so no surprises.
When my dad’s mother died, it was the opposite. Grab, grab, grab, hurt feelings, and some relatives still haven’t spoken to each other since 1999. Not too surprising when those who are mad were always the drama lamas of the family.
My Dad and step-Mom’s estate should be substantial. I hope it goes smoothly. I love my sisters very much but they can be pieces of work sometimes. My step-mom recently told me that my sister and both of my step-sisters all independently told her at various times that if anyone of us is the executor to please make it haj. I’m the only son but also they know that I am scrupulously fair and not very money motivated. They all have kids and like their toys. I don’t have kids and will give most of it away.
Before I was thinking the main complication is if people a) don’t have kids, or b) don’t just leave money to kids evenly. If they do, there’s got to be some problem with the kids if they don’t accept an even split (as always some exceptions to every rule of human situations). But from reading the responses I guess another problem with a small estate is where it’s illiquid items which haven’t been valued, like personal property and perhaps the house. My parents died when the estate tax threshold was much lower than now so we had to value everything to do the estate tax return, though the estate was hardly a ‘set for life’ fortune. There wouldn’t have been a reasonable basis to argue for example ‘who gets the house v other’. And we decided to sell the house anyway so it became just an amount of $'s to be split 50-50 like everything else. Same with most personal property and the car, turned into cash and split it. The only potential for conflict was relatively few items of sentimental value but there was no conflict because neither sibling really cared which particular thing and value small compared to whole estate.
Perhaps the conflicts come mainly at the relatively lower end and the very high end, but don’t happen at all among kids treated equally unless somebody is a trouble maker.
I just got an email from my sister, the trustee of my parents’ trust, to which their estates had been assigned (Dad passed away nine weeks ago). She expects the first distribution checks to go out in a week. Everything has been smooth as can be, and she’s doing a fantastic job of corralling all of the assets, arranging for their liquidation, and keeping all nine of her siblings informed.
Three that I know of. One was no problems, the Will was clear and the assets were known even though the designated executor of the Will was an idiot and dragged his feet getting things done and needed constant hand-holding by family members.
The second one, things weren’t made clear of who should exactly get what and this ended in arbitration about the siblings of which some of them no longer speak to each other.
The three, the deceased was not in contact all the time with the rest of her family. When she passed away, they found out she had changed her Will so that a non-family member was added. She also changed the Will so there were co-executors, one a family member and the other the non-family member. The family considered all this to be fraud, even though it was legit, and wasted a huge part of the inheritance on legal fees. My personal opinion, was the old woman made a friend and wanted to help her out, and the family simply wouldn’t accept this.
Given the above from what people have shared with me, I think the best thing to do is create a Will with a real attorney who specializes in these things and make their firm the executor of the Will so things are carried out without any drama.