I was talking to a couple neighbor ladies. They are in their late 70s. Their husbands recently passed away and they were talking about how and when to give their children inheritance.
One lady said I’ve already given them everything and I have nothing and laughed… then said, “Why don’t you?” to the other lady. I asked them, “Equally divided?”. One said yes while the other one said, “Why? They all have different needs and circumstances.” I said to her, “Don’t parents have favorite children?” She didn’t answer… and so I took it as yes. I told her they should get equal amount regardless of how she felt about their individual needs, circumstances and whatnot otherwise there will be rifts and hurt feelings for very long time come.
A true story: a good friend’s father won lottery twice (!.. That’s why I occasionally play. He only bought $2 worth everyday). Each one for something like 4-5 mil. They were already well to do as he owned a fairly good size manufacturing company. He divided the winning money exactly evenly between all the family members. They never had any problem whatsoever with the way the money was divided. I think this is the way it ought to be.
Back to the important question: As the title say, parents, do you have a favorite child? For some reason you find them ideal etc and just can’t help finding him or her absolutely adorable? A child you don’t really have as much connection with and just is a child/children of yours (not that you hate them or anything)? Do you have a child who reminds you of a bad trait or looks of your ex’s family or some such stigma that you can quite get attached or love as much as others? Would these sentiments affect the way you raise/treat/give them? Be honest (if you can).
And also share any inheritance etc stories if you’d like.
I read this one time and thought it was so true…
“The one I love the most is the one who needs me the most at the time.”
(That’s for “crisis” situations, not overall.) That’s why I can kind of see where the other lady is coming from. If there is a big discrepency in need…if one child is doing very well and the other is struggling, with several mouths to feed, etc., I would tend to divide things up more 40/60 or 35/65.
But I would also keep my eye on things and update the will from time to time.
As a mother of five, I have two separate trains of thought about this: I love all of my children with every fiber, but there are certainly moments when I like them at different levels. And dividing their theoretical inheritance equally wouldn’t necessarily be equitable. If something were to kill me tomorrow, I would leave behind children ages 20, 19, 14, 11, and 19 months. The two oldest are in college and working, so the residue of my estate would go toward raising the minors. That wouldn’t be a sign of favoritism, just the practical reality of the situation. If I live long enough to raise them all to adulthood, there’s a good chance that at the time of my death, two to four of them might have established careers and families while the youngest is still a college student. In that case, I’d likely set aside an amount to help one finish school and then divide the rest equally. Or what if one puts a career on hold to help her aging mother? Shouldn’t I compensate her for that time and “investment?” Or if one develops a disability that means he can’t support himself? Wouldn’t I be justified in settling extra funds on him?? There are just too many variables for me to agree that things can or should always be equal.
I’m not saying my parents had favorites, but as far as inheritances go, my parents did cut the inheritance of two of my siblings in half of the others. Mother said that those who took and took and took got the majority of their inheritance while the Bank of Mom and Dad was open.
I’m the youngest, but was made the executor. I told my mother I’d only do it if she discussed the terms of the will with everyone at the time the will was drawn up. I didn’t want to lose any siblings because I was following her wishes.
Fortunately there were no hard feelings, and everyone accepted with gratitude what they were given.
My parents keep telling us that everything will be divided equally in fourths, with outstanding loans deducted from individual totals.
This is a crock, not that they’ll listen. You can’t divide the house and property into four unless everyone agrees to sell and split the proceeds. 2 of the 4 will refuse to do that, and also won’t have the money to buy anyone else out. So it will end up ugly and not what the parents wanted, with the 2 who just want out walking away or forcing the other 2 to sell, bad feelings all around. They’re quite adamant about outstanding loan amounts being deducted from the totals, but there’s nothing in writing about who owes how much.
So it’ll be a very uneven inheritance that will cause much strife and ugliness, yay.
I don’t have a favorite between my two children, but my mother played favorites constantly. My sibs and I always knew where we stood in the family rankings. She also played favorites among the grandchildren.This led to a lot of family strife and unhappiness. To her credit, however, her will left equal shares of her property to her children, and equal shares of her cash to her grandchildren.
I believe it was more common in days past to have favorites among children. Both sets of my grandparents had favorites among their children and grandchildren. They never tried to hide it.
I have four children, ages 5, 4, 2 and 1. I have no favorite. Each is special somehow.
The five year old is my oldest. He was my first, and we logged a lot of hours together figuring out how the mom-baby thing is supposed to work. He had colic, so by the time we got through that together, we were like two old war veterans I think. He is mature for his age, and helps me out without being asked.
The four year old is my only girl. She’s sweet and girly, loves to dress up and play with dolls, and my inner child thrills a little bit to accommodate her at this. Also, she loves video games. How can you NOT adore a four year old girl that plays Zelda Four Swords on her DS and can get to Death Mountain all by herself?
The two year old was my preemie. He came early, was tiny and sick for the first few months. I came very close to losing him once. Every time I think back to that terrible day, I just want to grab him and snuggle him and never let him go. And he’s the biggest cuddlebug in the crew. He sits, snuggled into the crook of my arm, for hours at a go, just 'cause he likes sitting with his Mama.
The one year old is my baby. He’s precious and sweet, and has a mischievous personality. He cracks me up. He’s awesome.
That’s not favorites, that’s distributive justice.
Story told before: once, when I and the Bros were 13, 7 and 5 respectively, Middlebro and I complained that Little Bro was not being required to do the same kinds of housework we did at his age. Even Little Bro said we had a point, that he knew he was Mom’s favorite (by several bodylengths) and milked it for all it was worth but he was now seeing this wasn’t fair to us two.
Mom said “well, I also spend more time helping Middlebro with his reading,” (‘more time’ my ass, make that ‘time’) “so why don’t you complain about that?” We stared, saw she was serious, and Little Bro and I blurted “because he needs it! We don’t!” Mom laughed (I now realize that was a nervous laugh) and said “oh, so y’all have a distributive concept of justice, how cute” - then escaped to the kitchen, where we couldn’t continue the conversation on account of Thee Shan’t Bother The Cook.
Little Bro isn’t just her favorite… the same Spanish verb means “want” and “love”, and her two eldests she’s never wanted or loved. But leaving the dyslexic son to fetch by himself would have been so unfair, even she wasn’t able to do it.
“Equal” doesn’t necessarily mean “every pie piece weighs exactly the same”: sometimes, it means making sure that you have more than one kind of pie.
For Abuelita’s inheritance (my paternal grandmother), papers and items were divided more-or-less equally, but the money from selling her flat wasn’t divided 5 ways: it was divided 12 ways (the amount of grandchildren), with her children getting as many pieces as children of their own they had. This was proposed by my childless uncle, who worked for IRS and knew that any inheritance from him to his nephews will pay more taxes than from parents to children. It was his gift to us. I plan on doing the same with whatever we get from Mom.
Interesting how the thread has turned to inheritance. It doesn’t necessarily mean a child is the favourite, but more likely the best one to handle the estate when they inherit more than the others. A friend inherited his grandfathers two rental properties. The old man explained in his will that the grandson was the only one who “helped him with the cows” as a little boy. The fact is my friend is hardworking, skilled, saves his money and generally has his head on. Grandpa’s kids are not management types.
I have an easy kid and a difficult one. However, the easy kid is just getting to be a troublesome age, and the difficult kid’s a lot like I was in many ways.
If my mom were to die and leave more to my brother than to me, I’d be cool with it. He suffered more than I did from bad choices she made.
When Grandma died, what was left after all the bills had been paid was given to my mother. Mom’s sister got exactly nothing. Neither my aunt nor my mom had any idea why Grandma would have excluded my aunt, and they both assumed it was an oversight.
To this day I keep the secret that Grandma had once confided in me that she deliberately dis-inherited my aunt because of something hateful my aunt had said to her twenty years before Grandma died. Why yes, my Grandma was a spiteful old lady.
My parents are divorced and in their 70’s. My mom gets along better with my brother, and I get along better with my dad. So my brother and I have divided the care accordingly.
It is interesting about the “give according to need” feeling that parents in this thread express. It goes against the feeling of justice of the doing-well kid, you know? "So my sibling makes a mess of things and not only help our parents him/her out, they also seem to love him more for it. While I do my best to keep everything together and all I get from mom and dad is “Oh, can you help us out this weekend with StupidSibling?” or “Wanna listen endlesssly to our worries about StupidSibling” or “sorry, we will need to spend your part of the inheritance on rehab for StupidSibling”.
Makes me think differently of the Biblical story of the lost younger son who returned home and the pig was slaugtered for him, while his older brother cried: “not fair!”.
“Doing-well” kids need attention and love just the same as “doing-poorly” kids. When I say that my kids are treated differently, I don’t mean “oh, this one’s struggling so he gets all the attention” as some other posts seem to be suggesting. I mean that sometimes my daughter needs a day out with mom on her own, and sometimes my youngest needs an extra bedtime story, and sometimes my oldest needs me to listen to his comedy routine that he’s been working on, and sometimes these things mean that the other kids don’t get quite as much attention that particular day, but that’s OK.
Giving more to the one who blew it on blow is one thing, giving more to the one who got a shorter straw in the random drawings is a different one. If my mother had spent as much time teaching me to read as she spent on Middlebro I would have found it mightily offensive, given my reading skills. If she’d spent that much time on all three of us, we would have reckoned she was blind to our different skill levels. People are not Lego blocks, you should treat each one as a individual, responding to their individual strengths and needs.