I don’t want an inheritance from my parents. And neither do my siblings. We want them to enjoy their lasting years. As far as my kids go, I’d rather they grow their own wealth. Although, that appears to be harder to do in the current economy than it has been in the past. I expect there will be some left in our estate when we ultimately pass. I have no plans to donate it to other charities or a bank???
Our current wills divide everything amongst our kids upon our deaths.
Does anyone have a roadmap article on how an executor /trustee of a will or trust goes about closing out the paperwork and detrius of a life. My only advice I gave to my brother is pick up phone and call a lawyer in my state.
I have no kids. My bio sister is older than me and we are in a race to the finish. I am passing on financial assets to other siblings-my dad’s second family. Charity for real estate if it is not sold. I broke the connection to second generation years ago.
I am surprised no one is arguing about tax consequences. Fodder for another thread I suppose. I was told I could not -require the heirs to take TIRA money as IRA so they pay the tax in retirement. I worry the younger ones will waste it but Not My Problem.
One point raised upthread that I thought was interesting was the idea of passing on intergenerational wealth. In my family, any money was earned by my parents or (on one side) grandparents; there is nothing that goes back any further than about the 1970s. Since the family wealth, such as it is, is so recent, I don’t feel that my parents or I are obligated to keep it going. If it stretched back further into the past, I probably would.
As a childless only child, I’m already fretting about what to do with things like family photos and the comparatively few objects with history attached. Much less fungible than wealth, and when I die they lose all their value unless someone curates them.
Is there any family that you know of? If you’re an only child , you don’t have nieces/nephews but were both your parents also only children? If they were, did they have any cousins? Because photos and objects don’t have to go straight down - some of those objects with history may be from your grandparents or great grandparents and if a childless second cousin of mine died and left me their photos, there would probably be many of people I knew and remember. The second cousin, their parents, maybe our shared great-grandparents.
Yes, this is the issue: who would value these things? I have a couple of distant cousins who are very interested in family history, so they’re the obvious choices for things that relate to them. But due to a relatively high level of religion, toxicity, and dysfunction, I’m not close enough to most cousins to know the next generation.
But once I’m organized, I’ll solve it by sending emails until I find someone interested!
As you hijacked your own thread and the OP was barely a debate, I’m moving this to IMHO.
In general Great Debates is suppose to be narrow focused. Wide ranging conversations are better for IMHO.
Do you have a particular axe to grind here? I fit the demographic you described, and I assure you that I am neither being careless nor selfish with my inheritance. I recently retired, which I was able to do due to my own effort due to working hard for 33 years and saving my own money for retirement. What the inheritance has allowed me to do was to invest the inheritance and earmark it for long term care, allowing me to self insure for this rather than buying long term care insurance (insurance that I may never need, so I’m sure you understand that).
Somehow I managed to do all of this without once being a crackhead. Amazing.
I expect nothing from no one financially. While it’s likely I’ll get half and my brother half when my parents pass (and we’re nowhere near talking a million dollars or more), I wouldn’t be in the slightest offended if my brother got 100%. It’s not my decision to make, and if they made that decision, I’m sure they had good reasons for it. Nothing frustrates me more than seeing siblings duke it out over money that they did not earn. I personally will leave my kids money when I shuffle off the mortal coil, probably split evenly. But I do not feel any ethical obligation to do so, once they are adults. My financial planning does not include any types of inheritances, and I should hope my kids are wise enough to do the same.
When people die, it’s all too easy and common for their loved ones to sublimate their feelings of grief and loss into resentment of the other heirs. All those times when Susie felt like Mom gave Bobby the bigger piece of cake or let him stay up later gets transformed into the more acceptable grownup indignation over unfair distribution of assets. I know too many people who’ve essentially lost their siblings as well as their parents by the time probate closes.
It’s the worst. I long ago resolved never to argue at all over anything but genuinely life-changing money (which is definitely not coming my way anyway, barring a sudden lottery hit for my parents or something) and even then only up to a quick breaking point. It’s just not worth the aggravation and I care not about being treated “fairly.” If someone wants everything - sure, take it. Not my problem.
This is where I come in. I have three children, all happy and productive, but not equally wealthy. The eldest, my daughter has one teen-age son and she and her husband are reasonably comfortable with a joint income of, my estimate, close to $200K. But they live in a NY rental and would like to buy a condo, but have not quite managed a down payment. Second child, older son, retired from Microsoft several years ago with, probably $10M in stock, after converting options. After a year of boredom, he took a kind of gig job that probably pays him upwards of $100K. His youngest (he has four kids) is now a junior in college so his educational costs have pretty much ended. The younger son is married to a family physician and they probably have combined incomes of over $400K. They own a house in a Boston suburb and have one teen-age son.
We will likely have that $1M estate mentioned above, maybe more. Looking at what I have described above, what would you do? After considerable discussion my wife and I have decided that after we both shuffle off, whatever is left will be divided equally among them.
Now for a couple of anecdotes. I have a colleague who used to be an alcoholic and is totally dry these days. Presumably for that reason, his parents left him their estate in a trust. A bank is one trustee and his ex-wife is another. He is 94 and cannot break the trust and his ex hates him. Not good; not the way to go.
2nd anecdote. A mathematician I knew inherited $40M when his father died. His sister got 0. I assume it was just misogyny, although I never asked. When he was 40, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died five months later. In the meantime, he made a will. Having no wife or children he first left enough to Penn to set up an endowed professorship in the name of his thesis advisor (and later collaborator) who was, in fact, the man who was responsible for my becoming a mathematician, although he was not my thesis advisor. He willed $1M to another prof at Penn, actually a good friend of mine, which is how I know the story. The rest, over $35M went to sis.
I’m not sure what these stories prove, but it seems simplest to just leave them the money and let them sort it out.
Can banks even take contributions like that?
I’m thinking that such a crazy bequest might eventually get to the kids.
As far as the OP idea of not giving a dime, this is too extreme. I’ve read estate planning advice, for such a disfunctional family situation, to give something significant ($20,000?) with a stipulation that if the child contests the will unsuccessfully, they get nothing. Then the will won’t be contested.
Giving most of the estate to charity is good and fair, but only giving a pittance to a child is sad.
No. And I’m struggling through that process right now. Do talk to a lawyer.
I think parents have a responsibility to rear their children to adulthood, and to care for their disabled children. Beyond that, I don’t think they owe their kids anything financially.
But they often do leave money to their adult kids when they die.
You know, people who win a big lottery get a pile of money that’s totally incommensurate with how they’ve ever lived, and that often causes problems. But people who inherit from their parents get a chunk of money that is usually in the ballpark of what they grew up with, or at least, how they observed their parents living in their final years. That’s totally different. I would guess that almost all kids who inherit money benefit from that. Maybe they pay off some debt, or fix their truck, or get that dental work done. At a higher level of wealth transfer, they might buy a nicer house or go on more or nicer vacations. Maybe they fund a trust for the autistic child, or give more money to charity. Unless the siblings fight, my guess is that almost all inheritances help the recipient.
I think the fact that it isn’t earned is what makes the siblings duke it out. We don’t focus on the fact that “we” didn’t earn it, we focus on the fact that “they” didn’t earn it. If “they” didn’t earn it, why should they get it instead of me?
It’s a giant pile of undeserved money, and I don’t deserve it just as much as you, so get out of the way!
Sometimes - but sometimes there are other issues that cause problems. I won’t be fighting with my siblings when my mother dies and leaves almost nothing to us - but it’s not because I can be sure she had good reasons for how she arranged things. She didn’t. It’s because it’s not my sister’s fault that our mother sold her a house worth over a million (at the time of the sale) for $150K * , even though that sister is financially better off than the rest of us ( in large part because she never left home and never paid market rent. ) Like I said, I won’t be fighting with her - but I’m pretty sure that one of the others will never speak to her again after the funeral.
* Her reasoning is that when she bought it from my grandfather thirty-some years ago, the price was set at $150K. But that doesn’t really make sense - he didn’t sell it to her for the $12K or so that he paid. And she didn’t want to just leave it to the four of us because she didn’t want my sister to need a mortgage to buy us out. (although she had no problem with the rest of us paying mortgages)
I think it’s fine for parents to do whatever they want with the money before they die. If they want to give it all away to charities, that’s fine because it’s bringing them joy. They shouldn’t hold back on their spending just so that the kids get the money. But after they die, I do think it’s bad to bequeath the entire estate to charities rather than to the children. That will likely be hurtful to the children and leave them with life-long emotional scars. The children don’t need to get everything, but bequeathing it all to charities and nothing to the children seems like causing unnecessary pain to the children.
Sounds like she wanted the house to stay in the family and decided your one sister was the mostly likely to do so. That actually seems reasonable to me.
We only have 2 children, when the time comes what we have will be split between them, but if there are grandkids at that point, I would probably change to some other formula that could look like I was favoring one child over the other. So let’s say I have 2 grandkids at that point, I would probably leave 10% to each grandkid and 40% to each child.
But why would it cause pain? My parents give money to charities now, and it’s none of my affair. If they left everything to charities when they died, I would certain have some upset expectations and probably some intense feelings about that for a while, but I think “pain” is too much. Annoyance for a couple of weeks, maybe, as I reset my expectations. But it’s their money and their choice, and if they want to help homeless cats rather than their own flesh and blood, good for them.
What about people that don’t have children? Is there an obligation to leave wealth to siblings or nephews & nieces?
This is where we are. I expect we will have quite a bit left when we kick off and we’ve been having this debate.