I read stories all the time where uncle/daddy moneybags dies but in the will gives it all to the cat/charity and says ‘i give you my love, that is enough’.
The latest one I saw was in Lapham’s Quarterly in the article about methusaleh trusts, where one 19th century British bank governor gave naught to the dissolute kids.
Anyone on here get hosed by uncle moneybags? How did it go down? Anger or regret?
Well, not exactly Daddy Warbucks, my FIL’s father owned a lot of property and a lot of liquid assets. He split everything evenly between his sons. His daughters got nothing.
Now the daughters sort of beg to plant gardens on small corners, etc. It’s a pretty gross situation to my uninvolved eyes, but the brothers seem to think it was justified. Seeing as they’re the ones that got the $$ and property, I’m not sure they’re totally unbiased.
My dad is wealthy by most standards - $8m or so - but I doubt I’ll see anything with the way he spends it/gets into debt/lives his life. He’s been married and divorced 5 times now. I think I was his 3rd ‘family’ he had. I know I’m in his will for a small (relative, okay?) amount (like 500k) but he just had another child and who knows what will happen in the future. I know he wrote out my half sister and brother on account of ‘their lifestyles’, but he essentially writes people off when they don’t adore him or agree with everything he does. I’m the nicest child he has, but still. He originally had his (newest ex) wife in the will for the rest after his brothers and children got a piece, but I’m not sure what it will look like now. I told him to leave everything to my son (who, weirdly enough, is in for the same amount, and he already has 8 other grandchildren…hmm).
I’m more angry at the fact that he let us (my brother and I) grow up hungry, ragged and often freezing in the wintertime. My mom wasn’t so well off. I am the ONLY ONE in the family who puts up with him or visits or whatever, but I’m already getting ‘stiffed’ while he’s living, soo… 
We got nothing from my father, not that he was particularly wealthy. What money he had, my stepmother gave to his college and his (Quaker) meeting.
My great grandfather had three girls with his first wife and a son with his second. As the family genealogist I’ve looked for his will and have yet to find it and don’t think it exists. That said his three girls got $1 each. His son got 2.5 million. He was a developer in the 40s, 50s and 60s and made a ton of money. I can’t see it happening to me, but then again if it does my father has given me plenty already.
My MIL’s father was reasonably wealthy, in a country doctor sort of way. A couple of thousand acres, about a dozen commercial properties, several homes, that sort of thing. His second wife and youngest son got about 95% of his estate. The remainder was divided between his oldest son and my MIL. The youngest son, as I understand it, has frittered away most of it with drugs and legal troubles and now lives on some religious/militia compound out west. The last time he and Tony spoke, he sounded like the poster child for unmedicated paranoid schizophrenia.
Moral of the story seems to be that money doesn’t seem to buy much happiness, either for the second wife or the son.