Ungrateful nieces querying grandfather's will

Callistemon21

The only concern is that after his son died, the father changed his will at a time when he wasn't recognising people which indicates he had dementia, was not of sound mind and therefore may not have had testementary capacity.

I do wish people would stop using the dementia card. Even if he had it and couldn't recognise, from a photograph, people he hadn't seen for some time, it would not necessarily mean he didn't have the competence to make his wishes clear when making a will.

And it may not have been dementia. I saw a photo recently of someone who meant a lot to me years ago and didn't recognise them. People change. If you don't see them, they may change beyond recognition.

M0nica

So much of this thread is based on concepts of 'fairness'

Where is it stated anywhere in our legislation that wills should be 'fair' and who should decide what is fair and what is not?

The will and admin have all been done correctly.

I ask again, where does fairness come into it?

Exactly M0nica.

Maybe you should tell your nieces that their grandfather did not wish to leave their fathers share to them and tell them why, if you know?

lathyrus I agree with your moral!

Sorry I got your name wrong?

DaisyAnne

Callistemon21

The only concern is that after his son died, the father changed his will at a time when he wasn't recognising people which indicates he had dementia, was not of sound mind and therefore may not have had testementary capacity.

I do wish people would stop using the dementia card. Even if he had it and couldn't recognise, from a photograph, people he hadn't seen for some time, it would not necessarily mean he didn't have the competence to make his wishes clear when making a will.

And it may not have been dementia. I saw a photo recently of someone who meant a lot to me years ago and didn't recognise them. People change. If you don't see them, they may change beyond recognition.

... Quite!

I have numerous cousins I haven't seen for 50 odd years. I certainly would not recognise them in most photo's taken after the last time I saw them. We are not in touch - I remember their names, but that's it.

And I don't suffer from any kind of memory loss.

Callistemon21

SueDonim

Will your brother’s daughters not also inherit what would have been his share of the inheritance? That’s assuming it had previously been divided equally between you and your brother, of course.

My sister died three years ago so her children will inherit the 25% of my mother’s estate that she’d have received had she lived.

I don’t think anything can be done, though, apart from abiding by your dad’s will.

I really wish I had left things alone and not allowed him to change his will, as I would have inherited everything then, but I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing

I agree with what ^SueDonim said - surely your broy0ther's part of the inheritance should be going to his children.

To think you should receive it all because your brother died is quite shocking unless your father would have disinherited him for some reason.
Even so, he may still have wanted your brother's share to go to his children.

I'd be asking to see the will, too, if I were them.
And querying if coercion had been involved.

YABVU.

Why do you think the OP is being unreasonable. At the end of the day, this his her fathers’ will, not her own, and reflects what he wanted, not the OP. She was clearly uncomfortable at inheriting everything herself and managed to influence him into being more generous to her own and her brothers’ children. At the end of the day the will reflects what her father wanted, not her, so what’s she supposed to do, not honour her father’s will ? Just to satisfy what sound like greedy relatives who, as she stated in her OP, couldn’t even be bothered to visit him ?

I do wish people would stop using the dementia card
Why?
It's a valid point.
Coercion happens with elderly people who may seem lucid but do not quite understand the implications of what they are doing.
The brother can't speak up for his daughters.

Well, the OP (a new poster) hasn't been back.

Not surprised really.

People have pretty much said she’s acted criminally.

I’m sure her father would be distraught at the way his intention to reward his daughter for her care has been perceived.

I hope the ungrateful nieces arent on here either.

I think we may have been reeled in.

Dickens I am not criticizing you but these were his granddaughters who had lost their father, his son, not nieces nor cousins.

It sounds like some very avaricious people in the world - although I suppose that's a given.

Do you not understand the irony of your post?
?

I would want my nieces to have my brother's share of the inheritance and would feel guilty keeping 60% of it for myself plus 20% for my children.

But I can see that most on this thread would not feel the same.

mokryna

Dickens I am not criticizing you but these were his granddaughters who had lost their father, his son, not nieces nor cousins.

They were the OPs nieces.

Under English law, you are not obliged to leave an estate in any particular way or to any particular person. He was happy to leave the amount he decided to his son. Once his son had died he appears to have wanted to leave very little to his granddaughters. He was entitled to make that decision.

We know, actually know, nothing more.

After my mother died my grandmother changed her will. We discovered, after getting a copy of the will following grandmother’s death, that she had left £50 to each of the grandchildren, offspring of her four children. The will stated that the remainder of her estate was to be divided equally between her three children, (named) , and should they pre decease her, that share should go to their offspring. It did not mention my mother or that her ‘share’ should pass to her children, of which there were four. Nothing we could do, but it did cause hurt. Were we loved less? Certainly there was no back story around the relationship between my mother and grandmother and I really don’t think there was any malice intended. We will never know grandmother’s reasoning.

I am hopeful that if one of my AC were to die, the remaining would make sure that this AC's children got her share on my death. But maybe I should examine my will to make quite sure this happens.

I would if I was you luckygirl

You really can't always depend on people to do the right thing.

I've seen the most unlikely families fall out over wills.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

LOUISA1523. I’ve reported your post. I’m not a serial reporter but I’ll be surprised if you haven’t breached guidance.
Disagree with others as strongly as you want but unwarranted personal attacks like yours are as unnecessary as they are offensive.

When we had our wills drawn up we decided to split everything between our children, and leave them to pass on anything they have left at the end of their own lives to their own families as they see fit. Obviously they can choose to gift as much or as little as they like to their own children at any time.

We could see pros and cons with doing this and with specifying provision for grandchildren, so it was a tricky decision. If (heaven forfend) we are predeceased by one of our children we may revisit the wills, but as things stand we think the way we’ve done is better.

Whatever we’d decided I would be furious to think that any of them were arguing over the ‘fairness’ or otherwise of how we have split our money (if we have any left when the time comes).

If the Will was drawn up by a competent Solicitor they would have asked a few basic questions to test his mental capacity. When I remade my will (I was in my mid 60s at the time) I was asked who the current PM was, what year it was and several other questions.

The Solicitor was a little embarrassed as she said I was obviously mentally competent(!) but these were questions asked of anyone over a certain age.

Of course, one solution would be for the OP to include the nieces in her own Will if she wished

Doodledog
"Whatever we’d decided I would be furious to think that any of them were arguing over the ‘fairness’ or otherwise of how we have split our money (if we have any left when the time comes)."
I'm sorry but this made me laugh. Being furious when you are 6 feet under, is a good trick if you manage it.

Louisa1523 Any reason you have to be so rude and unpleasant? Can you not make your point in a calm and intelligent way?

I don't think you are being unreasonable Jannabell. Your role as executor is to ensure that your late father's will is carried out and that is what you are doing.

Your father would have had to have proved to the solicitor who made the alterations to his will, that he was of sound mind so IMO any suggestions that he may have been suffering from dementia are irrelevant and unkind.

The whole point of making a will is to ensure that your wishes are carried out. That your estate is distributed to those you want to inherit.

There may be some who disagree, who feel badly done too but as executor that is not your responsibility.

I do wish that when it comes to an inheritance from a parent or GP, people who don't seem to understand, do understand that it is a gift, not a right.

I think they thought they would be getting more - they are now querying how could he have done that when he didn't always recognise people......neither of them ever visited him, which is why he didn't always know who they were in photographs

So - here's the case. Nieces are not happy with the sum they got from grandfather's Will because they expected more.

They are therefore questioning whether he was of sound mind / or coerced when making said Will. As far as we know they are suspicious because he didn't recognise them in photographs... though if they never visited him, how would they even know he didn't recognise them other than through hearsay?

And that's it. That's all we know.

It doesn't matter a fig if we think the nieces should have inherited more because their father pre-deceased their grandfather, if he was of sound mind he had the right to leave his money to whoever he chose to leave it to.

Did the father of the two girls leave a Will - did he even have anything to leave in his Will, why didn't he leave something for them in his Will? Why did the nieces expect to receive more? There are so many 'unknowns' in this OP that basically renders it pretty pointless - how can we even know if she is BU or not BU?

So we all chime in with what we would've done under the circumstances... but that's the point, we know our own circumstances, but we don't know anything of the OP's... except that the nieces are disgruntled about their 10% - and would've been even more so if it had only been 5%.

The OP raised too many questions for anyone to be able to offer anything useful regards BU or not.

LOUISA
I will try to be polite and not descend to your level of rudeness

Quite the opposite, my dear. Were I the OP I'd be asking for a variation so that my nieces would receive their father's share.
That's how our wills are set up.

I'm talking about fairness - had the son lived he would have inherited his half share under his father's will which would be passed on to his children (or not if he spent it all) now the OP inherits the majority.

If that is what the father knew he was doing, fair enough.
But if he was unable to recognise anyone that rings alarm bells.

I think you should apologise, however, if you can't understand that, if I were the OP, I'd feel uncomfortable about inheriting most of my brother's share too, then I'm sorry. The exact opposite of greedy in fact and more generous than the OP.

But I love all my nephews and nieces dearly even if I rarely see them now.

The


If my immediate and wider family read your extremely rude post they'd be incredulous then just snort with laughter at the ridiculousness of it.