Ungrateful nieces querying grandfather's will

One of my children has a severely disabled child. I have made provision for that in my will. Thankfully I know all my children are decent humans who wouldn't do anything other than applaud my instructions. In fact I'm sure without my instructions they'd be awarding that child an even bigger allocation, but I wanted to thwart their generous instincts.

In my opinion " genuinely doing the right thing" would have been ensuring your brother's children got his share of the inheritance.

nadateturbe

In my opinion " genuinely doing the right thing" would have been ensuring your brother's children got his share of the inheritance.

But your opinion is based on assumptions that may not be correct. You don't know why the will was written as it was and it is of little consequence as the OP's father was fully entitled to write it as he saw fit.

Jannabell, IMO YANBUR

I m another who wonders why the unfair will, in normal circumstances you would expect it to be divided between brother and sister (unless the brother and family were estranged) if the brother pre deceases the father then his share would pass to his children ?
Obviously there is a lot more to this family story but it will be hard for * janabell* to come out without ill feeling I think especially as she admits influencing him in his will (even though it was meant well)

We have just re-written our Wills - kept it very simple - everything split evenly between our two sons, which to me is only fair. If either predeceased us, their half to go to their offspring. Our youngest son currently has no children and is single; if that was the case when he predeceased us, then his half would go to his brother.
I can see why your nieces are puzzled; the Will does seem heavily one-sided.
However, for whatever reason, your father decided not to split his assets equally between his 2 children (especially after his son predeceased him) and that's entirely up to him. But I do think YABU in being surprised (and annoyed) that your nieces are questioning the Will.

Spice101 why direct your comment at me? I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Rosie51

I do wonder if one child has more children than the other(s) do people think that the grandchildren in the larger family should get less than the child or children in the smaller family? Is it their fault their parents had more children, do they as individual grandchildren deserve less?

The money is going to the parent though, not the grandchild. There's only so far you can break things down before it becomes ridiculous.

But I do feel the spouse or children of the deceased son should get what would have been left to him.

Jannabell has been extremely fair. One, in carrying out her fathers wishes and two, in adding on her own gift to each of the children. Her fathers wishes must be paramount and I can see why he did what he did.

That being said, I don't think the granddaughters should be contesting the will.

nadateturbe

In my opinion " genuinely doing the right thing" would have been ensuring your brother's children got his share of the inheritance.

In principle, yes.

But a person of sound mind makes a will according to their wishes regardless of what others think they should do with their money.

We don't know much about the circumstances of this family, only what the OP has told us, therefore it's impossible to know why the daughters of the brother didn't get the amount they expected. We don't even know what was in the brother's will..

Under 'normal' circumstances one would expect spouse and offspring to inherit after the death of the other spouse but for various reasons, that doesn't always happen. And in this case, we have no idea of the family dynamics or circumstances. So I think it's impossible to say whether the OP is being unreasonable or not.

If the two nieces think the grandfather was not of sound mind, or that he was coerced when making his will, then they can contest it on that basis.

The fact he didn't recognise them from photographs because they never visited him is neither here nor there. If he was of sound mind, he would at least be aware of their relationship to his son and, presumably, made his will on the basis of how he wanted the inheritance distributed.

Unless the OP gives more background information - and I doubt she'd want to do that - I think posing the question itself was rather pointless. Legally she has to do what the law requires her to do. Morally - well, that's a whole different ball-game and, as we don't know the family's background or situation, we can't possibly give any valid opinion.

If the will has been legally made and your father was competent to know and understand what he was doing when he made his will, then they can complain all they like - and waste their money on getting legal advice - but it will get them nowhere.

You have our sympathy. DH was executor for an uncle. His daughter was not appointed executor because she did not get on with his second wife. The will was crystal clear about everything in the house (owned by his wife) that was his and should go to his daughter.

Despite that she kept demanding things that were not left to her, or the whereabouts of all sorts of objects that her father must have sold (he was an antiques dealer). She claimed that we were thieves and had cheated her out of valuable items that her father had left to her. We hadn't, but it was not very pleasant.

This thread reminds me of Jardine and Jardine, a Dickens contested will scenario.
It’s also reminded me to re-read ours and possibly tweak it. If one our our children dies before us, I’d want their children protected. I think we’ve done this but if not, will do.

We are reviewing our wills in a couple of weeks. Very simple, one dies it goes to the other, both die it is divided equally between our 2 children. When one of us dies then we re-do the will. My M-i-L who is a very fit 91 year old has, at our insistence, left us out of her will. She lives with her daughter who takes wonderful care of her. The last we heard she was leaving 75% of everything to the daughter and the remainder to be split between our 2 children. It has all been documented legally. We don't need her money and sister-in-law has more than earned it I would hope, though we have never discussed it, that unmarried s-i-l has a will leaving everything to our 2 children. We are a very small family, which can be a blessing.

Iam64

This thread reminds me of Jardine and Jardine, a Dickens contested will scenario.
It’s also reminded me to re-read ours and possibly tweak it. If one our our children dies before us, I’d want their children protected. I think we’ve done this but if not, will do.

... Jarndyce and Jarndyce - I always think of name as Jardine too, partly because we had a local estate agent called "Jardine".

It went on through generations and in the end legal costs devoured the whole amount - Dickens blamed the Court of Chancery, saying "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!" Hmm, not sure about that...

Like you, we're going to re-look at our will. It's a sobering necessity... we also want to make sure our GC are protected.

Spice101

nadateturbe

In my opinion " genuinely doing the right thing" would have been ensuring your brother's children got his share of the inheritance.

But your opinion is based on assumptions that may not be correct. You don't know why the will was written as it was and it is of little consequence as the OP's father was fully entitled to write it as he saw fit.

I agree with nadateturbe

The brothers children are entitled to see copy of the will and are not being unreasonable in asking.

It's not unreasonable to think that the father would want his son's share to go to his son's children.
Tha is how our wills are set up.

It sounds as if the father had dementia as he didn't recognise people so it is not unreasonable to ask if he was of sound mind when he changed his will and did he do this of his own free will.

It sounds rather fishy to me.

As I see it the OPs father made his Will after his son died. That Will invalidates any previous Will which would have left money to his son. Why should the nieces receive any more than their cousins (the OPs children)?

In my experiance death and wills bring the worst out in some people.
And all of a sudden you see people you have NEVER seen before in your entire life,believe me as i`m living just that.

Contesting a will is a serious matter and should not be taken lightly because it may involve criminal activity. There is not much you can do if it is one persons word against another, you have to have “evidence” not “suspicion”.

Quite often especially if the executor is the main beneficiary, if you raise an issue, an arrangement can be made to distribute differently but that does depend on the good will of everyone

Oldwoman70

As I see it the OPs father made his Will after his son died. That Will invalidates any previous Will which would have left money to his son. Why should the nieces receive any more than their cousins (the OPs children)?

Does no-one get this?

They receive the share that would have gone to their father had he lived.
If the OP had died then her children would have received her share.

It's just so simple.

When my step grandfather died he left everything equally to his two stepdaughters, stepson (my father) and two nieces. Well, dad had died by then so my brother, sister and I inherited dad’s share. A niece had also died so her two school age children inherited her share. So, my sister, brother and I had less each than the niece’s children. Did we complain? No.

I’m going to leave my money (what’s left of it?) to whoever I like, however I like. It’s my money!

I certainly won’t be leaving anything when I’m dead, to relatives that can’t be bothered with me alive.

As it is, the OP is receiving her brother's share as well as her own minus the 10% to her nieces and her children.
Ie her family receives 80%, her brother's children receive 20%.

It seems everyone but me and a couple of others think this is fair.

There may be other circumstances eg the OP may have had to give up work to care for her father who had dementia in which case fair enough.

Just tell them that as executor, you are legally obliged to abide by the terms of his will.

Contesting a will in this case, would IMO be futile and certainly expensive.

I used to know someone whose family with IMO far more cause contested a will - their father with dementia had remarried and left the entire substantial estate to wife no. 2, who they were 100% convinced had instigated both the marriage and the entirely new will.
They still lost.

Totally agree with you Latherus.