Even when parents intend to divide the estate equally, their plans can go wrong and leave children with inheritances of different sizes. This usually happens when parents leave different types of assets to different heirs. Before explaining how to handle unequal inheritance, it will be important for you to understand what inheritance really is. An inheritance is any asset that you leave to a specific person within your will.
These assets can include anything from cars to jewelry, clothing, money, 401k accounts and more. When an inheritance is unequal, this means that the value of the assets left to each individual does not equal the same amount for each person. Sometimes, an unequal inheritance is a case in which the best-laid plans go wrong. For example, a parent may leave two different children assets that the parent believes have approximately the same value, a property, for example, and perhaps a brokerage account.
However, disinheriting a family member or leaving heirs unequal amounts can lead to hurt feelings and family arguments. It is important to consider carefully the correct wording of a will, so that relatives are more likely to understand the reasons for leaving an inheritance that is not equal. If you find yourself in this situation, talk to your bank, talk to your banker, and see what the best thing you can do. Talk to your financial advisor and talk to your estate planning attorney so that when you die, Joey doesn't decide to keep all that money, which is legally all that is.
And take a vacation, pay off his debt or give it to his girlfriend, who knows what Joey wants to do. But it doesn't matter because you gave him 100% of that money to the detriment of your other two sons. If they understand that an uneven division is what makes your inheritance fair because of the gifts you have already provided during life, then your inheritance will meet your expectations and will not be a surprise. Proving the undue influence of a sibling is difficult because there is nothing particularly unusual about leaving one child more than another in a will, especially when that child has provided care and attention during life.
Alternatively, the husband could specify that certain amounts of his estate go directly to his children instead of leaving everything to his spouse or naming his children as beneficiaries of a life insurance policy. Or, it could decide to designate certain assets for immediate receipt by the children, and leave the remaining assets to the spouse. Read on to find out everything you need to know about unequal inheritance, the reasons behind it, and the best way to handle unequal inheritance. When possible, parents and adult children should discuss the issue of family inheritance so that intentions are clear and expectations are met when one parent eventually dies.
You have to decide how important that risk is given the temperament of your children, their relationships with each other and whether any risk of leaving an unequal inheritance is worth what you are trying to achieve. When writing your will, it will be important to think about how you are expressing your intentions by leaving the directives for the distribution of the inheritance. Without a personal explanation, adult children may wonder if their parents care about them or if they trust them less than their siblings. Whatever the reasons for leaving an unequal inheritance, you can be sure that whoever receives less than others will feel unhappy or even angry about it, especially if you didn't expect it.
That said, an equal inheritance makes the most sense when any donations or financial support you've given to your children throughout their lives have been minimal or substantially the same, and when there isn't a situation where a child has provided most of the custodial care of an older parent. It is unrealistic to think that every child has adequate reasons when it comes to receiving an inheritance in their parents' will. Instead, the husband could establish a trust that would support his wife, leaving his children the remaining assets after his death. Leaving an unequal inheritance for your children is more common than you might initially think, and the number only seems to be increasing.
After all, whether or not you want to leave money to your children, a big family feud is probably not what you want to be remembered. . .
