That’s the thing with massive wealth. It seems like there is a fine line between ensuring the wealth you built is properly maintained for future generations and simply being controlling.
I guess that’s why a lot of uber-wealthy people take jobs running charities and foundations. It’s gives them something to do that’s respectable and prestigious without really having to take a crappy corporate job.
Unless they want to I suppose.
For those of you who live where children must inherit, how do you feel about those laws? As a regular yankee doodle dummy, they feel a little intrusive to me.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around inheritance laws back when existing debts were passed along with assets as readily as anything else. Seems like it would have made for much more interesting financial discussions. I never paid inordinate attention to my parents financial affairs but if dear old dad had ran up a bunch of credit card debt and casino runs or something I might think different.
Have most countries abandoned primogeniture as well? Any notable wackiness out there? Can I get put on the hook for financial debts incurred by relatives in certain countries?
I can imagine people who don’t like the idea just spending every penny before dying.
I grew up in Pakistan during the height of both Sharia Law and a heroin epidemic. There were many tragic cases of children running through their inheritance in no time on drugs.
In one case the only son of one of my father’s coworkers inherited the bulk of the estate upon the death of the father. Put his mother out of the house, and then inherited the bulk of HER estate when she died a few months later. The equivalent of several hundred thousand dollars blown through in a couple of years on heroin and the criminal gang that controlled him.
There was little the parents could do via a will. Most of the estate was earmarked for statutory heirs. The only thing they could do was turn over assets to someone else before death, thereby pauperizing themselves.
Nothing is prohibiting you from giving your sister $20M to correct your ugh! situation.
I think doing so would complicated from a tax perspective but I have no idea what the process would be.
A “few thousand dollars” isn’t likely to be enough to care for elderly dogs once they develop medical conditions. Perhaps your friend will happily bear the cost as your dogs age in a loving home or they might be put down at the first sign of monthly kidney medicine costs. It’s your call.
This all sounds reasonable but, honestly, I would actually remove the educational purposes language. They may have constructive uses for the money that isn’t education. I assume later grandkids will also benefit from the trust. And congratulations on the new grandkid!
Your “request” sounds like it might be precatory language. You can request what you want and they can ignore your request with impunity. Why request it at all? If they know you and love you, they will give your views the respect they deserve. If they don’t know you or don’t love you, they will ignore your attempt at manipulating them. I suspect your lawyer structured this language intentionally as precatory language to placate you even though he knew it was unenforceable.
There’s a lot you’re not saying here. Don’t worry, there’s a lot your kids are thinking about you that they aren’t saying either.
I don’t understand what makes her relationship “pseudo” or what you plan to do but it seems like you are trying to use money to control her life. The expression, “money can’t buy me love” was written with people like you in mind.
No, it isn’t. Your desire is to make choices for them. The way to make is easier for them is to give them money, guide them into how to use it responsibly, and give them the freedom to make decisions that are best for them.
I’m not sure you are or you wouldn’t be asking the opinions of a bunch of strangers on the internet.
Could you have made a better life for yourself if those expectations weren’t imposed on you? In truth, this is hard to consider objectively because you were probably raised to live exactly one kind of life and it’s the life you led. And you got the amount of happiness you expected. Looking back, it’s probably almost impossible for you to imagine how you could have lived a better life because it’s probably hard to imagine any different life.
You’re an heiress who demands respect but there is no indication in this thread that you give any. If there is a God, he’s judging you by the way you treat people.
It can’t help but be an example. Is it a good one or a bad one?
He’s got $40M and his sister’s got 0 and it frustrates him. If the taxes is what is stopping him from sharing with his sister, it must not be that frustrating.
I’m sure it’s doable but I assume there are ways to minimize losses to taxes when doing so.
I mean, in the post I was replying to, the brother ended up giving $35M to to the sister not very much later, so from his point of view I guess it was okay?
I more mean, wow, what a statement from the parent to the child. Like, I don’t need or expect my parents to give me anything, if they leave all their money to charity then fine. But if they gave $40M to my sibling and not to me, I would find it hard to believe they were not sending me a very clear message of how they felt about me, and I would not have very happy feelings about them even if I didn’t begrudge my sibling the money. Or even if my sibling gave me half (or even more than half) the money.
(My parents don’t have $40M, so I suppose it’s a moot point 
)
My aunt Muriel, who was rich as Midas, was hurt that her (childless) aunt Re left half her money to my father, and the other half to Muriel’s kids. We all know (including Muriel) that her husband, a lawyer, must have suggested that to my great aunt Re, to reduce taxes. And my aunt Muriel died in her nineties with plenty of money. Far more than the total of aunt Re’s estate.
But she was hurt that Aunt Re didn’t leave anything to her.
Money can become an emotional shorthand for love when it comes to inheritance, even if there are practical reasons for an uneven split. I still carry a tiny kernel of resentment because my father-in-law, who had made a point of introducing me as his daughter for at least 30 years, named my husband (his surviving son) as his sole heir and only POD on his retirement account. Now, I know, rationally, that it makes no difference to what happened to the money; when he inherited, Mr. Legend put the money in our joint trust, and it’s extremely likely that our marriage is going the distance anyway. It just hurt my feelings a little, unexpectedly. If I hadn’t been the one who was helping him with the paperwork (and everything else) after my brother-in-law’s death, I wouldn’t have even noticed. As it was, it stung a little.
Interesting. My father was extremely worried because he hadn’t named my husband in his will, but both my husband and I were puzzled by this—why would he? We’re married; anything I have, my husband has access to, and I certainly don’t expect my in-laws to mention me in their wills. But I wonder if a lot of my nonchalance is because it’s all so abstract—when it comes down to the wire, I’ll probably be surprised by the strength and direction of the feelings.
I don’t see anything wrong with a parent making bequeaths to their child but not their child-in-law. When I’m setting up a will or beneficiaries, I want to do it in a set-and-forget way. Specifying the child means there’s no need to update if they should get divorced.
One thing to mention about inheritances left to one spouse is that it’s not necessarily joint property. If an inheritance stays in the name of one spouse, it remains property of that spouse even in a divorce. It’s not considered a shared asset in that case. If it’s in a joint account, then it’s joint property and would be split in a divorce. So if Ross and Carol are married and Carol inherits an IRA which stays in her name, Ross would not be entitled to any of that money if they divorce. It wouldn’t be considered as a joint asset or be used in any sort of divorce settlement calculations. But if Carol puts that inherited money in their shared bank account, then Ross would get half in a divorce.
Some of it might be because it’s abstract - but some of it probably isn’t. I’m sure it’s not abstract for me - I never expected to inherit anything from my in-laws and I wasn’t upset when my husband did and I didn’t. I wouldn’t expect my in-law to leave me anything- if my husband was alive , we would share whatever he inherited and if he wasn’t alive, I expect that it would have been left to my kids.
My parents specifically named my wife in their will because they want to make sure she inherits my share as one of the three siblings in case I pre-decease my parents.
Interesting. I just checked my copy of the documents (useful, to distribute copies of the will to the heirs before need). I had forgotten where everything settled: should I pre-decease my father, it stipulates that my husband gets half of my share, but the other half is divided among a bunch of other people. My husband’s descendants are specifically excluded, so he has to survive me but not predecease my father to get anything in his own name, or else survive us both.
I know a woman that upon her death (95) left her only living heir (her son) about 1/3 of her liquid assets (about $800k) and also the proceeds from the sale of the house, her car, and household belongings (about $500k) were to be put in a trust and the corpus of the trust to be distributed to the heir 1/10 per year. If the son passed before the 10 years were up, the remainder of the trust went immediately to the local library. The heir was 72 when his mother passed.
The remainder of the liquid assets (about $1.6 million) went to the executor of the estate, her longtime friend and neighbor.
The son and his family cried foul and claimed that the executor had manipulated the deceased. However the will had been executed 20 years before and the executor only saw the will for the first time the day after the mother died.
Took about 2 years to get through probate, which happened during covid.
Bequeath, don’t bequeath, noodles.
Money and opinions belong to the living. If you’re a parent and you expect banking leftovers when you leave the party, set up whatever mechanism doles it out in whatever way pleases you. You’ll never know what people say about you when you give them the big reveal, someone will always feel left out and probably not be too generous with you anyway, so why even care? I love all my kids, but I will be finding a way to smooth the path of one of them in particular, and I’m perfectly happy to do so. If someone else takes issue with my plan, they are welcome to amass their own heap of gold and distribute it as they see fit. I won’t care, I’ll be dead.