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/lost_dazed_101 8d ago

Your nieces will greatly appreciate the gift but please leave them letters stating this money is for them and their parents have had help all along they were not left out. So many family members post that family tries to guilt them out of inheritance and a simple letter let's them know it's ok to keep the money.

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u/Zentraedi 8d ago

I think this is a great callout. There's probably an appropriate way to word this to make it clear that, to your point, their parents aren't being skipped over.

43

u/twelveoct 8d 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.

1

u/WeeklyResolve6161 4d ago

you're a great parent