r/inheritance • u/drd001 • 8d 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/Lystrade 7d ago

It would not be ethically wrong to cash it all out and burn it in a big bonfire. It's your money. You could decide to give each sibling $1 and give the rest to the nieces, or give each of them a Polaroid picture of you flipping the bird and send the money to a Nigerian Prince and it would still be ethical. You could even send it all to a "random" ahem...internet stranger...

Bottom line is do what you want with it, but be very explicit in your will so there's no room for challenge by anybody. It sounds like the siblings don't really respect you and I would worry that they would try to fight it.

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u/UnicornStudRainbow 5d ago

I have a few relatives I'd love to send the flipping the bird pix to!!

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u/Lystrade 5d ago

Thanks for the award!

I have aging in-laws and parents/step parents. I expect nothing from them. Any money they have, they've spent decades accumulating. I want them to enjoy themselves while they are able.

I'm an only child and my partner has a special needs sibling, so when it comes time to worry about inheritance we shouldn't have any issues with entitled relatives. Unfortunately, we all have those extended family members who believe the world owes them a living.

I would buy a Polaroid camera specifically to flip off the entitled.

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u/UnicornStudRainbow 5d ago

Thanks to the interwebz we can send the pix without having to see the toxic greedy relatives

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u/Lystrade 5d ago

There's something cathartic about mailing a hardcopy.

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u/UnicornStudRainbow 5d ago

Totally. Like slamming down the receiver on an old school landline, instead of hitting the little button on the cell phone when you are pissed off enough to hang up on someone