The younger comes closer to death by my hands, more frequently. probably because I was so similar to him as a kid. They are both great kids. My father just died, and left a 40-40-20 split between his kids, my sister and I being the ‘40s’ and my half-brother, from whom my father was deeply estranged, getting the 20. No problems. I just settled the estate, thank god, what a pain even without the sibling rivalry.
No.
Come to think of it would any parent actually admit playing favoritism? Would any break out of self-denial? Perhaps I should put up a poll and give them the “5th” option? I couldn’t get my mom to say anything but at one point she said " I think I did it all wrong".
Seriously I hope this thread helps at least some kids lost in shuffle to get some affirmation of love and attention. It may seem obvious that they are loved to parents but sometimes we all need affirmation and refreshment… remember hugs and touches make them smarter! This is my middle child complex speaking.
I believe parents can get used to kids who seemingly grows up fine by themselves and takes little care that certain short business directive like communications can become the way you communicate with that particular child if not careful. Or at some point whatever temporary “time out” sternness becomes the norm and decades goes by, ie, after a while parents find it awkward to break the barrier and as time goes by it becomes written in stone that can’t be changed. I don’t know whether the nature of the beast can be changed but give 'em a hug and be aware of the pitfall.
Not a parent, just commenting on the ‘split it evenly’ thing- my grandad died a few months ago, leaving 2 biological daughters, and one semi-adopted as a teenager.
My mother (with my Dad) runs her own successful business, which she says they never would have been able to set up without loans from her father; her sister has been unable to work for most of her life due to mental illness- but despite that, is one of the nicest people you could hope to meet. Despite a condition which leaves many people virtually hospitalised for life, she’s still married to the guy she met as a teenager, and raised 2 kids, one of whom sadly seems to have inherited a similar illness, and has been a rather large financial drain on them. She visited my grandad at least 3 times a week (daily towards the end), did most of his cooking, cleaning, washing and shopping for at least 10 years, once he became incapable himself. My mum lived further away, and only managed to make it down once a month or so.
Seriously, you think my mother should feel aggrieved if her sister got left more?
I doubt she did, though no-one’s told me details- my aunt’s just too damned nice to agree to anything but a 3-way equal split; if the will left her all of it, she’d give most of it away.
There are two different questions here, first:
And second, does this make sense?
First question: I’ve only got one child, but one reason we didn’t try to adopt a second time was that I was afraid that the second kid would perpetually suffer by comparison with the Firebug.
Second question: to each his own, but if I had two kids, and one was an investment banker and the other was a schoolteacher, I’d let them split my personal effects evenly, but would otherwise leave my estate to the schoolteacher, because the investment banker wouldn’t really need the money.
OTOH, if one kid was an investment banker, and the other was a loafer and a sponger, I’d leave it all to the investment banker.
So I’d definitely take the kids’ different needs and circumstances into account.
Perhaps this is my problem…
I have two kids and both have been my favorite at different points in their life. I try and treat them fairly equally over time but that shows up differently for each kid.
Inheritance wise I have one kid who is studying sculpture and one who wants to be an english teacher - I’m thinking 50/50 is the way to go 
My parents make sure, if they give any substantial amount of money to either me or my sister, they give the same amount to the other, so that they won’t be playing favorites.
I think they do this because they like her better, and don’t want me to find out. But it gets me money sometimes, so I’m not going to say anything anywhere they might hear.
I don’t really blame them for liking her better. Her personality meshes a bit better with theirs. I can be a bit challenging to get along with. I have personal experience that shows that family members’ personalities aren’t always the same, or even compatible.
My brother is much older than me, and I know when I was underage the will gave him around 2/3s of the pie, with the understanding that he had the responsibility of taking care of me.
Now that I’m an adult, I don’t know how it goes. I’m guessing we’re 50/50, with the understanding that my brother keep a chunk for his little kid.
No one is owed any money from their parents, you don’t need to lecture me thank you very much. However, if you have $10K and you give the fuckup $7500K and the good kid gets whatever’s left over…that’s kind of obnoxious.
I don’t have this problem, anyway. I am an only child. I will either get all of the money, or none of it, depending on what my dad decides. I was just making a comment.
A child can only compare to the ones next to him or her… siblings. Having it good compared to kids staving to death in some country going through famine is something too distant and abstract. But that’s what some parents say to their kids.
I am not a parent, but I do believe that, for the most part, parents do have favorites. It’s not a bad thing either, it’s only natural that one will like someone they get along with better than one they don’t. It’s only a bad thing if it affects the love and action of the parent or if the children are aware and use it as a way to leverage more from the parent or taunt their siblings or whatever. If anything, I think parents that deny it are doing themselves and their children a disservice because by failing to admit it, they cannot control for it in making sure they don’t treat them too differently.
On that note, I’ve been told by both of my parents who their favorites are and I think they generally do a pretty decent job of handling it, though one is certainly better about it than the other. I certainly wouldn’t think it’s a good idea to tell one’s kids when they’re not grown up though. Many of my friends that are parents have admitted their favorites as well, but also seem to do fine with it.
As for inheritance, I think any child that has expectations about receiving anything from a parent as a sign of love or whatever is sort of missing a point. I would certainly want something from my parents, but only as a way of remembering them and any money they can do with what they see fit, whether it’s splitting it up evenly, giving more of it to the one more in need or to the one who has used the least of it, or giving it away. The worst thing that could possibly happen would be damaging my relationships with my siblings because of inheritance.
I’ve been told that I’m my mother’s favourite, by an uncle. Obviously neither of my parents would ever dream of saying any such thing… but I kind of believe him, for reasons.
Having said that, I get a lot less than the rest of them. I’m unmarried, child-free and live in the same country as my parents. My siblings who have children and/or live far away get things like washing machines and kitchens bought for them, and my parents fly out to see them all several times a year, send them expensive packages for every birthday, etc. Hell, just the money they’ve put into all my siblings’ weddings doesn’t bear thinking about! If my parents gave me the equivalent of what they spend on the others, I’d be a lot better off than I am. I know that when my parents die (may it be far in the future), I will receive less than an even share of their estate. I do kind of resent it - the money’s not mine, but then it’s not my siblings’ either. That makes me sound like a horribly grasping person, and I’m not, but it does grate a little. On the other hand I have a tendency to turn down offers of financial aid (like my dad paying for a hotel room if there isn’t space in the house when I go to visit my parents), so it’s obviously not bothering me that much!
My mom has always openly and honestly favored my sister, and it has caused me much pain over the course of my life. My sister’s name is on her checking account and the title to her house; so upon my mother’s death, it all goes straight to sis. She has given my sister all of the remaining furniture from our childhood home and all of the family pictures.
My mind can tell me that it’s her property, and she can give it to whoever she wants. I guess my heart wishes she wanted to give something to me.
I don’t even know your location, but check with a lawyer. It’s probably not as straighforward as you think.
An example:
My name is in my mother’s bank accounts as a “secondary signatary”. This is basically intended to make things easier when she dies or if she’s permanently incapacitated, and also so I can withdraw money if she’s temporarily incapable of it (in the hospital for example); it also means that, since I am “secondary”, I can only do those things if she can’t. By local laws and because I’m a “secondary signatary”, the money will still get split three ways (I’ve got two brothers) absent a will; if my name was in the deed to her house or if I was a “primary signatary” to her bank accounts, half would be mine and the other half split three ways. Dad and her had to take a specific will so their house would go completely to the survivor: if they hadn’t, now half of Mom’s house would be hers and the other half would be ours.
My maternal grandparents lived in a different location, with different inheritance laws. That kind of will isn’t even available there, so Grandma’s house would have been half-hers, half her daughters’ if they hadn’t ceded the property back to her. Grandpa could not leave her his half of the house without disinheriting both daughters completely.
I have seen many cases of blatant parental favoritism. My own mother swears up and down its not true, but she always preferred my brother to me. I’ve told her that I believe that she believes that she loves us equally. That doesn’t mean she does. And yes, we are the classic ‘good’ kid (me) and ‘bad’ kid (him) situation.
My aunt adores her youngest son, and has admitted to me that he is her favorite of her children. Her preference for him is so blatant that my mother has called it “sickening”.
Another cousin was the victim of one of the worst cases of this I’ve ever seen. I was a baby at the time, but my mother’s told me that my cousins Thing One and Thing Two (obviously not their real names) would get Christmas presents from their mom every year, only for mom to take back Thing Two’s gifts the next day and exchange them for money. She always let Thing One keep his gifts.
My feeling is that if you must have a favorite, be considerate and never, ever let it show.
My Dad chose his youngest son as his favourite child and is quite blatant about it. I mean, seriously dude, when I was 16 I was homeless and penniless and he couldn’t help me because he’d turned the third bedroom into a dining room and they needed money for Joey’s private school ski trip. At least come up with a good lie or something!
I think he just realised he’d fucked things up totally with the rest of us but had one last chance to make a child believe he was a wonderful Dad, and he took it.
My ex-GF also always believed she was the least-favourite child, with her two sisters being the favourite of one of the parents each, and, TBH, I think she was right. It was mostly little things like them buying her sisters new appliances while offering us the secondhand ones their neighbours had thrown out. But in their case I reckon it’s just that they don’t ‘click’ with her as well as they do with their favourites and don’t realise they’re ever being unequal; they are good parents overall.
Most parents probably have a child they get on with the best even if they don’t actually love them more. I’d say that’s pretty much unavoidable.
There was a very, very nasty situation in my mother’s family when my grandmother passed, my mom being not only the only girl, but also the executor because, on all practical levels, she was not only the one my grandmother trusted enough, but she was also the only one who had any kind of accounting/bookkeeping background.
I was little when this happened, and to this day I’ll never know what exactly caused the rift as everyone involved is now deceased, but it was enough of a rift to keep my mother and her brothers apart for more than 20 years.
In some ways I thank god I’m an only.
I’ll start by saying I love my three sons each like crazy, but…
I do have a favorite. I’m bad I know. But if you knew him, he’d be your favorite too, I swear.
My middle son is just plain nicer than his brothers. He’s just a heck of a lot easier to get along with. He is filled with joy and optimism that radiate out from him. He can’t stop himself from exclaiming things like, “You’re the best mom in the whole world!” and “I love everything!”
In the unlikely event that there is anything to leave when I die, it will be divided equally and I certainly try to treat them equally, but middle son is a special case.
I have an older brother. He’s nearly fifty and has never moved out of my mom’s house, or had a job any more responsible than a paper route. He’s almost completely asocial; may have borderline Asperger’s. He had a falling out with my grandfather (mother’s side) and didn’t receive anything in his will. I did.
Last December, my mom got sick. I wasn’t working at the time, so I flew across the country to look after her; waited for her during surgery, drove her to every doctor’s appointment, found a care facility, and arranged the cremation and memorial. I’m the executor on the estate. Mom had a dozen different accounts in a dozen different places. I’m still tracking them all down.
When I was a kid, I always thought that my brother was mom’s favorite. She went to her grave and beyond swearing it wasn’t true. Her will leaves the house to my brother, and says it’s not to play favorites, but to make up for not inheriting from her father. Everything else is supposed to be split 50-50. Except it’s not. Retirement accounts have beneficiaries. One of them leaves everything to my brother. It may have been a mistake; there’s only room for two names on the form and she put him as primary and me as secondary.
And I can live with that. It’s clear my brother needs more help than I do. As the attorney said, these are good problems to have. Lots of people die and leave their kids nothing but a pile of unpaid bills.
I don’t think it’s as simple as just saying one’s a favorite and one’s not. A conversation I had with my mother last winter makes me think she didn’t really know me very well. She just always assumed I was fine. I think she protected my brother from everything. Every slight or imbalance had to be made up to him. I don’t remember anybody protecting me.