I’m NOT the parent in question. Just a FYI.
And by mental capacity, I mean like not just IQ, but also other mental conditions like depression, ADD/ADHD, etc…
Like the child(ren) has not done anything wrong like crime or misbehave, but simply the parent thinking that giving an inhertance to (in their view) a “mentally disabled” child is a waste and “would just end up in the hands of government”. And they justify it since they think that “the kid can just get disability income anyways”. (Location is USA, for reference)
I personally think this is just very ableist… what do you think? Is it okay for parents to do that?
could make a special needs trust.
I’m okay with not giving someone with disabilities and inheritance if it’ll fuck with any government money they’re getting for their disabilities. You have to handle money in that kind of situation very carefully. My mom is my life insurance beneficiary or whatever it’s called, but the money would be going to my sister. My sister is intellectually and physically disabled and cannot work. My parents handle her finances so she doesn’t lose her disability income, so my mom would be in charge of keeping that money for my sister and using it appropriately. When I make a will, most, if not all, of my shit (my house, car, etc) will go to my mom legally, but my mom knows my sister is the intended recipient and would help figure shit out.
It’s going to happen to me. When I was homeless, I was a waste to help because I’m doomed. Now that I am decently off with a great career, I am a waste to give anything to, because I have it handled. I have this feeling my parents don’t like me lol.
If that’s the attitude, I don’t think it’s right. If it’s going into a trust or something, to prevent the recipient from harming themselves, I don’t see a problem.
Structuring it to avoid having benefits clawed back does seem unethical but I would honestly do the same.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with leaving everything in the hands of the most capable child along with the clear understanding that they’re now the one who is responsible for looking after the family.
There sure is, it’s called an understanding of human nature.
Do you mean they’ll probably just keep it all for themself? If so then you’re right, that’s something you would have to consider.
Yes, trusts need oversight, always. Family means very little to some people when money is involved and you never really know who they are until they’ve been stress tested.
Sometimes it’s a legal necessity! I have a child with severe disability and if they ever posses 10k in value they’ll be disqualified from their many thousands of dollars in mental health supports.
What we’ve done is set up things to go into a trust where their advocate can use money for ongoing support (my child is also extremely irresponsible with spending and used to always immediately spend Xmas gifts on impulse spending including a lot of scratch tickets). While their government support is great it may not always be there so the trust is there if there’s a break or support or to try and support them if they become disqualified from disability (it’d be fucking awful though, we’re well-ish off and our life savings could support our child’s support for about half a year max).
You can give people cash with limits on it instead of just giving a lump sum.
For someone with a drug addiction or gambling addiction giving a lump sum would be death.
Put that money in a trust fund with limits on how often they can withdraw and what they can spend it on.
It may not be fool proof but better then just not giving anything at all.
Here’s a tip: if you have multiple children, split everything evenly no matter what. It doesn’t matter how good your reasoning is. It doesn’t matter if one kid is an addict, it doesn’t matter if one kid needs the money more. It doesn’t matter if one cares for you in your old age and the other disappeared.
No matter what.
You are inviting nothing but misery into ALL of your children’s lives by dividing it unevenly. No matter how reasonable it is to do something else, they will always tend to think that dividing the inheritance unevenly means that you loved them unequally.
Agreed, but let’s be clear about what “evenly” means.
If you have two children and one goes to college and the other doesn’t, the one who doesn’t go is getting shorted money unless you make an alternate arrangement with them.
If your children are adults and one lives on your couch and one has their own house and job, if something happens to you, splitting the inheritance down the middle is not fair: you paid room and board for one and not the other. Itemize that shit and it comes out of your roommate’s end.
Starting at adulthood, equal is equal; it isn’t “equitable”. I’m not arguing that you gotta take Tommy’s braces out of his inheritance, but you gotta take out the car you buy him to get around as an adult, bail money, the money you have to help with house downpayment, it all counts.
I think it’s also worth having frank discussions with your kids about their inheritance and encouraging them to work things out themselves ahead of time.
My family has maybe a bit unusual but I think very healthy relationship with death. It comes for us all eventually, no sense dancing around it.
There’s no complicated inheritance situations in my family, if you have kids everything gets divided up evenly among them. If they don’t have kids it gets divided up evenly among their nieces/nephews.
So for example my parents estate gets split between my sister and myself, my uncle who doesn’t have kids gets split between us and my cousin, my cousin gets his parents’ all to himself.
We’ve already got things divvied up amongst ourselves pretty well. As long as my sister signs over her claim to our parent’s house, I’ll sign over my third of our uncle’s house to her, and she’s happy to buy our cousin out of his third or trade him for her current house (which would also have the benefit of getting all 3 of us in the same town, cousin has some disabilities and it would be nice to have us all nearby in case of emergencies, or the payout from my sister or money from sale of her house plus his own inheritance from his parents would set him up pretty well)
We also occasionally call dibs on some other desirable belongings, like my uncles skillsaw
This is something that needs to be more common. Estate planning shouldn’t be a surprise for the survivors, dramatic will readings are a B movie plot device, not reality. You don’t need to do an annual reading of the will, but everyone should know the basics that’s involved.
Or, if you have an inkling that you won’t split everything evenly, at least talk to the kids about it. My mom has 2 kids. She’s told me she’s giving a greater proportion to my brother and I’m ok with that.
My brother is a drug addicted felon and has always needed/gotten more support than I have needed/gotten.
I’m distant from my mom by choice (we didn’t have a healthy relationship) and I’m a functioning adult with a lovely partner, a stable job, and a competent therapist.
Mom’s told me she’s putting things into a trust for benefit of my brother, but I don’t know that she’s done that and it’s not my problem.
Anyways, I guess the takeaway is it’s ok for your kids to think dividing the inheritance unevenly means you love them unevenly if they’re not wrong.
100%
Anyone who doesn’t understand this has no family that’s dealt with family breaking over money.
this. even if it’s a dollar.
that one kid will be wondering why the $1 for the rest of their lives but have no way of finding out why. that stuff can start as nothing but fester quickly. I’ve had this happen to my family.
Well, I have certainly seen the opposite. I have seen a number of cases where a parent has chosen to leave a significantly bigger portion of their estate to a disabled child because that child would need it.
Ethics is not an area in which there are right and wrong answers – just ethical principles that do or don’t appeal to you. For me, I think parents should have the right to decide how their wealth should be distributed without any “must be even for all children” constraints. But I would never choose to leave my least able-bodied child less for that reason.
Depends on the disability, e.g. someone with a gambling addition will just spend the money, or sell the house. If its like autism spectrum disabilities than it can be considered unethical. (If the inheritance is a house, than put it in trust so they can’t sell it for any reason.) If they’re saying that the person will “just get disability payments” shows that they don’t care and would rather play favorites than have all their children to succeed.
I think a lot of it depends on the asset.
Cash and stock is easy to split amongst children, but a lot of families with generational wealth usually have wealth generated from ownership of a company.
I can see some parents choosing to keep the company together under streamlined ownership rather than breaking it up across several children. If you are choosing inheritance based on who would be the best person to run a company, you’re going to self select for certain personality traits.
trying to not give too much away but this happened in my family. a relative who has quite severe autism and has been on benefits for something like 30 years (they are in their 60s) is not being given any money by their parents. the parents willed all their physical assets to their other child (with special clauses that the person should still be able to utilise them if they wish) and put any money they would have gotten into a trust that pays out monthly. the reasoning for this in that the person in question is unable to gauge the worth of money, and because they are constantly getting suckered into niche religious groups that want tithes (until they tire of their mannerisms and throw them out).
while it does sound ableist to say, i do really think this is for their own good. it falls on the rest of the family to look out for them now and we do try. both children did agree to this arrangement by the way.
I would think a disabled person would need more money to survive in this world than someone not disabled.
Through the magic of the US government, more money actually can fuck them over. If they have more money than the government seems appropriate, they lose benefits and can be forced to pay back past benefits.
If I were the parent, knowing exactly how little disability actually covers, as both my father and my wife are/were on it. I would help that kid more, and hope I raised my other kids to appreciate that they just needed more help.
That’s absolutely ableist.
No one is entitled to anyone’s inheritance. The ethics of the situation really depend on the details. Did one child look after the parents in their old age? Doe one child have more needs? Was there a promise to distribute everything evenly?
If the only reason for exclusion is because one child has depression or anxiety and isn’t the smartest, then that sounds pretty ableist and shitty. If the person really can’t manage the money, why not set up a trust designed to help them out without just handing over lump sums of cash? The one case where exclusion makes sense is if they require long term in patient care since at least in the US, all your money is eaten up by the medical bills before you default to Medicare (unless you have a stupid amount of money and can pay out of pocket for premium care forever)
Sounds very US… I had to take some info on the topic here in europe and it appears that there’s a very much unalienable right for kids (and next of kin) to a fair distribution.
One can literally not change the part of the patrimony going to a child (without resorting to very complex arrangements that seemingly won’t be accepted by a judge should shit hits the fan).
Even though, for example, one learns he did not father a child -still cannot change the percentage. Tough luck for the other children, the wife…
Everyone has a right to be protected here. In the grand scheme of things it’s for the best.
And yeah, ethics is the basis for this simply you have to assume the position of the weakest one involved and not from the perspective of the one with the money ;-)
