I think the moral of the story is that if your wealthy single parent starts talking about marrying again, especially somebody younger/healthier, the only sensible thing to do is murder his/her intended.
Wait until they get married and sign up for sizable life insurance policies and mutual wills. THEN murder them.
At least, that’s what I’ve learned from Forensic Files … 
Nice sentiment in most circumstances. Really. But it sounds like all the “kids” were grown up before Dad remarried. The only people who might remember Dad as the father figure are the naturals, step-sis “had long since moved out so they never lived together as a family.”
I wonder if there are other factors involved in Dad’s decision? Like, the 6 naturals still have Mom’s estate to “look forward” to while maybe this, and whatever step-mom leaves, is all step-sis will ever inherit?
Kudos to you Isamu for being willing to listen possibly change your attitude. My advice would be not to dwell on it; the more you try to determine if it’s fair or not the more it will eat away at you.
It seems a bit obnoxious that the Step Mother is complaining but inherited money does weird things to people. Don’t let it change you.
Nope. She leaves it to whoever she sees fit. Fair’s got nothing to do with it.
Is it fair? Probably not.
Can you expect to get anything from her? Based on what you’ve said, nope.
Please ask her what she thinks would be fair.
I was on the receiving end of a similarly updated will. The ex wife got half in the divorce, then half of the estate, her daughter and grand daughter took half of what was left after her share, his actual children split half of what was left after that, and me and my cousins split what was left. Prior gifts and tuition were subtracted and ultimately me and my cousins were made to feel like we should actually owe money, while some random toddler I never met but was technically related to by marriage for a few months will never have to work. (Assuming her relations don’t blow their booty and rob her, that is.)
In a way I feel bad and callous in saying this.
I don’t think it’s fair to put any expectation on an inheritance.
I have no appreciating a gift from a deceased, but I see it as a gift.
I will admit I might think differently if there had been anything of high monetary value for me to inherit.
Then again I consider Warren Buffett’s take on the matter. Dad covers their education and they do the rest.
The remainder of the money goes to charity. He fears the corrosive nature of being a “Trust Fund kid”
In a way I feel bad and callous in saying this.
I don’t think it’s fair to put any expectation on an inheritance.
I have no appreciating a gift from a deceased, but I see it as a gift.
I will admit I might think differently if there had been anything of high monetary value for me to inherit.
Then again I consider Warren Buffett’s take on the matter. Dad covers their education and they do the rest.
The remainder of the money goes to charity. He fears the corrosive nature of being a “Trust Fund kid”
I think it would be fair if she did it. Not at all fair (or reasonable) to expect it. You have now gotten all I’d expect to get from this woman or your father (sorry about your loss) - her sense of fairness seems to be similar to one of my Sunday school students, who screams that it isn’t fair if he doesn’t get to go first EVERY TIME.
Two stories on expecting inheritance.
My grandfather in law was wealthy and had his children late in life. His my grandmother in law had died young and he’d remarried when his two kids were grown. My father in law lived in expectation of received half or a quarter of the estate upon his death. He died, his second wife got everything. She had no children of her own, so now he lived in expectation of her passing and getting 50%. She was younger and lived into her nineties. When she died twenty five or thirty years later, she quite fairly and unexpectedly (to everyone ELSE) remembered her husband’s children - despite the fact that my father in law had bothered to have NO contact with her. But she also gave away about half the estate to charity, remembered two nieces, and gave her husband’s grandchildren (including my husband) a share. So he waited his most of his life (he was in his sixties before she passed) expecting to be a millionaire any minute only to get a small fraction of his expectation. He is quite bitter, even though two of the people who benefitted from his reduced expectation are his own children.
Ted is a friend of my husband’s parents. He is the only child of wealthy parents and has lived off the expectation for years. He’s never held a real job, lived off the little bit his parents sent him so he wouldn’t be homeless or starve and friends who think he’ll be rich someday. His parents finally passed when Ted was well into his sixties. His Dad set him up with a trust fund, he gets $25,000 a year adjusted for inflation - i.e. what his parents had given him his whole life to keep him from being homeless or starving. He is AMAZINGLY bitter. (My mother in law shares this bitterness believing that what happened is not FAIR - I, on the other hand, think Ted got quite a deal - he’s never had to work and has been able to spend his days idle. If he’s wanted something, he could have worked so he could travel or buy luxuries, but Dad has always met his basic needs. And Dad continued to provide for him in his will. Dad could have left him to fend for himself).
If you get anything when she passes, it will be a bonus.
It would be nice if everyone who ever annoyed or offended me left me money in their will, but if I expected this to happen I’d be setting myself up for a long series of disappointments.
It isn’t fair or reasonable to expect that your stepmother will reward you financially for listening to her complaints, especially since her complaints are about money. If you’re looking for a “turnabout is fair play” solution here then you’re free to complain to your stepmother about how her daughter got more money from your father’s estate than you and your siblings did, but that’s not actually going to do you any good beyond whatever pleasure you might derive from the act of complaining.
I’m definitely in the minority here, but I think your father was unfair in leaving his money the way he did, even though it was his to leave, etc. etc.
Unless there’s a good reason to leave it the way he did–say, your step-sister has unusually high health care costs or something–it would have been far kinder to have, at a minimum, left all the kids, step-sister included–the same amount.
Unless you were all nasty about his remarriage or something. And your stepmother sounds like a nightmare. Presumably you need not spend much time with her now that your dad is gone.
It is nice that Dad remembered the kids directly in his will, even though he predeceased his wife. It is common that the surviving spouse receives all the family assets, and then makes any family disbursements on their second death.
My wife is one of three children from one family. One of the siblings worked a career and has a pension, but is “slow” and not really responsible enough to live alone. The other brother lived off his Dad his whole life, had a few failed businesses his Dad paid for, and was, according to his Mom and Dad, the Golden boy of the family. He did many things for Mom and Dad - of course, not working he had some available time. My wife and I visited her parents weekly, did many things for them, and had them over often for meals. In the end the golden boy had his lifetime ambition come true and got 100% of the estate. It stung, because it is hard not to take that as a direct personal insult. We would have had no problem if the slow sib got most of the estate. We will never talk to Golden boy again. We are taking the other sib out today to a pet show. If you want to destroy a family, unfair wills are a good way to do it, especially without any type of reasonable explanation.
That’s what I wonder too. I know the terms of my mother’s will, and am pretty certain her current husband’s children think it’s unfair, because they only get to share a quarter of his half of the estate between them, while I get the whole other half. But we were all adults when they married and they have a very wealthy other parent to inherit from, and I don’t. Also, my mother paid way, way more than half into the estate, so if anyone should be complaining it’s me, but actually I think it is fair.
At least your Dad had a will; otherwise you’d have got nothing.
Fair doesn’t come into it. It’s what the dead person wanted to do with his money. But in my opinion, each partner in the marriage has 50% of the assets. When you dad died, the widow should get 50% and his children should split his share, so 1/6 of 50% means each of the 6 children should have received 8 1/3 % The stepmother’s daughter will eventually bag 50% of the estate.
If I die first, I wouldn’t expect my current wife to leave anything to my kids when she goes. The will is simple: if I go first, she gets everything (and vice-versa). What she does after that is her business, and I would expect that she’ll leave whatever is left to charity when she goes. Fairness has little to do with it, as they’re not her children.
Is this just a will we’re talking about or is a trust involved?
When dealing with second marriages a trust typically handles them by letting the spouse live off the money, but not spend the principal.
In that scenario, the wife might have the 50% to invest and live off of that money, but when she dies it goes to the children. I would imagine there are a lot of ways to cheat at this if she wanted to, but that’s a common setup from what I hear from an elder law attorney.
No it wasn’t Jimmy McGill.
[/Better Call Saul reference]
I’m not saying that he SHOULD have set it up that way, or that it would have been the only “fair” option. But that’s how a lot of people do it.
My aunt had a peculiar and unfair will. She never married, and left all her money to her four adult nieces, but in a convoluted way which I won’t bore anyone here with. Suffice it to say, her will was a catalyst for some behavior among the heirs that would only shock someone who has not been through it. I thought I knew a person I had grown up with and been friends with for fifty years, and I truly did not. Here is my pearl of painful wisdom:
Even if my aunt divided everything into four equal cash chunks (which she could not, since most was tied up in a single property that one of my sibs lived on), how would it have been fair to give equal amounts of money to four people in completely different financial situations? Should one of us been punished because she married an impulsive spendthrift and was deeply in debt? Or perhaps, rewarded with more because she needed it so much more? Or another given less because she was financially secure, due to thrift and careful investing, and didn’t need the money? Or maybe one should be given more because she felt picked on and discounted her whole life? Or should the one who took care of my aunt until she died get more?
You know what fairness is? It’s what everyone involved agrees is fair. If there is someone who doesn’t agree, then it isn’t fair – to them. Therefore, fairness is a gossamer fragile concept rarely experienced. Don’t bank on it ever happening to you.
Also, money that you manage to force a family member to relinquish is not the funnest money you will ever spend.