Yes, that was my intent. Having minor children involves additional obligation both for their funding and for designating someone to care for them in your permanent absence.
But offspring also includes subsequent descendants. I probably should have used the term descendants in the first place. You don’t owe your kids and you sure don’t owe your grandkids.
Again assuming heathy adults, my view is you do not. It is, admittedly a somewhat extreme view. Made somewhat easier for me to hold by not having any children. But …
When my own parents died (separately) my attitude was that in each case while I’d appreciate anything they gave, had they chosen to give it all to somebody else that’s 100% their right. 100% their right. I can have an opinion, but not a vote. And to the degree I form an opinion, I’m being hypocritical.
My late aged MIL revamped her will a few months before she died. She wanted my (and her surviving adult children’s) advice on how to distribute her non-trivial funds. To everyone’s credit we all said “That is solely your decision and we have no right to offer any advice.”
To me that’s the right way to run things whether you’re the giver or the potential recipient.
Parents owe nothing to their adult children, and vice versa. It’s conventional to leave things to your children, but it’s also conventional to love your children and also like them. Conventional, but not universal.
I don’t have kids, so my will directs wealth be transferred to the next generation in my husband’s family. We did not consider the next generation in my family except to rule them out.
Ethically…I am not so sure. I do not have children but I do not think your job as a parent stops when your kids turn 18. Can you kick them to the curb then? Technically yes. Is that something you should do? I do not think so.
Legally you have no obligation to leave anything to adult children. Ethically, I think you do (unless they have done something to not be deserving).
If they’re doing okay otherwise, I don’t think you have an ethical obligation to leave them anything (although you certainly may choose to do so). If they’re not doing okay, maybe your obligation is to help them before you die?
I’ll tell you what not to do, if you have multiple children and one or more of them are clearly ‘losers’ while the rest are ‘normally’ successful at life. Don’t give the vast majority of your money to the losers and try to saddle the normal ones with somehow managing a trust or otherwise trying to control the life of the losers.
I’m always intrigued that the default assumption of many people seems to be that the opinion of the elderly people about the younger people is the correct one.
As often as not, it seems that the elderly are judgy assholes who are using their money as reward/punishment for whatever they want. I don’t assume the elderly are good people or were always good people. They just have money.
As to “have money” not necessarily. But for sure in the context of the thread they’re the ones deciding what to do with whatever money they have. IOW, they have the money, be it great or small.
My late first wife was a banking attorney and also did estates and trusts as a side gig. Whether from her POV of assisting the bank in not letting one kid steal the estate’s money, or from the other POV of assisting parents in making their divvy plans, or dealing with the divvy problems once those plans matured, one thing became glaringly obvious.
Whether the estate was $500, or $5mil, it was big enough compared to the beneficiaries’ fortunes to be worth fighting each other to the death over. The economic apples (mostly) don’t take root too far from the tree they grew on.
If your kid is literally a crack addict, then you should probably be setting up a trust. Otherwise, if I can, I’m setting my kid up for life. As long as we live in a society with idle rich folk, I want him to be one of them. Will he spend it irresponsibly? Well, if he doesn’t, one of our descendants down the line surely will. These are the things you don’t have to worry about when you’re dead.
Having one sibling managing the trust of another sibling seems like a recipe for conflict and resentment. If I had a vast fortune, I’d have someone outside the family manage the trust.
I think your ethical obligation is to do what you can to have a good relationship. (Edit: to be family.) Any gifts and aid proceed from that principle, and will be reciprocal.
Full title: Warren Buffett Cut Off His Granddaughter Who Spent Nearly Every Christmas and Spring Break With Him: ‘I Have Not Emotionally Or Legally Adopted You As A Grandchild’
Not sure if I buy this though. I mean, clearly it happens. But, I think most parents and their children have at least an ok relationship. Some won’t (and I have seen it up close an personal where a parent was a massive asshole towards his son…stunning to see). This is not meant to suggest all parent/child relationships are good ones. Just that most are at least ok(ish).
Yeah, in theory I don’t think that a parent owes an inheritance to their kids. We keep telling my parents to “spend our inheritance!” they should have fun! They brought us up and gave us an education and I feel that their responsibility ends there.
Now, if I felt the guilt of needing to leave my wealth to my kids (which I might, if I were wealthy) and my kids were crackheads, I’d totally set up a trust that gave them a steady income but wouldn’t let them blow it all in a few months, and I don’t know why that isn’t an option in the OP.
We actually did set up a trust for our underage kids just in case anything happened to us before they came of age. Interestingly, the lawyer who helped us with it recommended extremely strongly that we push the age at which (in the case that we both died) they would come into their inheritance as late as possible. My recollection is that he wanted late 30’s and even that he thought was on the early side, and we settled on early 30’s. Apparently he had seen a lot of cases where kids got too much money too early and it was Really Not good for them.
The issue for the second sentence is there’s a LOT more people with enough money to need managing, but not enough money to be cost-effectively managed by professionals.
Trust worth multiple tens of millions? You can hire somebody to manage that. Trust worth under ~7m, all the way down to a few hundred K? Still money worth protecting but no business will touch managing that one at a price you can stand.
Heck, someone of modest background but a diligent saver may be legitimately very proud of having $75K in the bank as their sands of time run out. Meanwhile the kid(s) would go absolutely spendthrift nuts if they got that ginormous pile all at once, or even their per capita share of it. What to do?
I will say I have been utterly shocked at the avarice of many families when one of them dies. The scramble for an extra dollar can be shocking (personal experience, no cite).
I am very happy that when my mom died none of her kids did that. Her will said “X” and we were all fine with it. No fuss. I count us lucky in this regard.
My mother-in-law’s estate divvied up about $45,000 between her two children. My sister-in-law spent all of hers in 18 months. My late husband and I did spend some of our share (on stuff like “get pickup fixed” and “get needed dental work” mostly) but banked half of it as an emergency fund.
Some kids are spendthrifts, some are not.
With my own parents a lot was spent on my mother’s final years, and dad distributed quite a bit of what was left as presents and also to help people out during family emergencies. I was genuinely surprised that there was anything left to inherit. Pleasantly surprised, but still surprised.
I never demanded or expected anyone to leave me anything, and planned accordingly. But I realize not everyone thinks that way.
Good on ya! You’ve always got a sensible head on squared shoulders. Better than me and certainly better than most.
My post was in response to one about someone wanting to control the kids’ use of inherited funds precisely because the kids were known to be totally unreliable money managers.
You’re absolutely right that whether wealthy or not, some folks can manage money sensibly, and some cannot. And for some you don’t know which until they suddenly have 2x or 10x more than they did and now they go excessively wild. What’s a parent to do?
One approach is to do nothing; recognize that running your kids’ lives from beyond the grave is probably a fool’s errand. Give them what you want, and they’ll cause the chips to fall where they do. Be that for good or for ill. The one certainty is that you won’t be around to care who well they do or don’t.
The issue being discussed is “Who will manage the trust?”
Appointing one of the sensible relatives is a recipe for vast family feuding. If you’re seriously rich so the trust is 8-figure+ big, you can hire that out readily enough. But the vast majority of people in these situations don’t have that kind of money.
Eh…they cost a couple thousand to set up and not much to run. So much is automated these days. Setup the trust, plop money in the account and have it dribble money to the people you want it to go to. You don’t have to be super rich for one.
Although, the trustee will collect fees so there’s that but it’s not that much (well, depends on the trust and how much is in there but it is available to “normal” people).
Is it that expensive though? When my maternal grandmother passed away while I was in my early 20s, she left me about $80,000 in a trust administered by a person at the bank. I’m sure there were fees, but given that I don’t even remember what they amounted to it couldn’t have been much.
The reason my grandmother, who had a very modest income, was able to leave me that money was because she never spent a nickel on anything she didn’t have to. Can’t imagine her setting up a high-fee service.