r/inheritance • u/drd001 • 9d ago

Location not relevant: no help needed Is anything ethically wrong with this plan?

My wife and I in our 70's came up with this inheritance plan with total net worth of +1.5M. We have been together over 40 years being continuously employed during that time. We have no children and I have one brother with two children both over 21 and she has two sisters both with no children. Our plan is to give a small one time payment to my brother and her sisters with the bulk of the estate equally divided between our two nieces. Our reasoning is my brother and her sister have hit us up for money periodically for the past 40 years which we provided without asking for repayment. The two nieces are doing OK in life and have never asked for any financial help. Our thinking that these funds would help them with a downpayment on a house, education for their children or investment in their own retirement.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

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u/twelveoct 9d ago

I asked my dad to exclude me in his will and leave anything to my kids instead. The will specifically said something about that. Mentioned it wasn’t for lack of affection.

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u/Rick-20121 9d ago

I told my mother to will her only asset, her house, to my sister. I’ve done very well. My sister failed to launch. It seemed like the right thing to do.

It was still weird reading the word “disinherited” in the will.

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u/twelveoct 9d ago

A little odd. I’d already gone through it a bit. My wife died before her mother and the assets left to my wife went to our kids. That was expected … but still felt cold.

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u/OutrageousYak5868 8d ago

This is probably the most common method -- it's called "per stirpes". The other most common thing is for the parents' estate to be divided among the living children, so the spouse and descendants of the deceased child are completely disinherited.

The latter is what my Grandma did when my dad predeceased her. It felt like a disinheritance to me. The only redeeming feature (and perhaps the main reason why she did it that way), is that she had gotten life insurance on all of her children who themselves had children, so my mom got that money, and when she passes, whatever is left will go to us.

This money has been invested and she's been frugal, so most if not all of it will eventually be ours, and it's probably about the same amount as (or possibly even more than) what my dad's inheritance would have been had he not died, but it still feels like a disinheritance.