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2w ago

Is it ethical for a parent to distribute inheritance based on the child(ren)'s mental capacity (aka refusing to give an inheritance to child(ren) with reduced mental capacity)?

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?

63 comments

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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 100%
  Anyone who doesn't understand this has no family that's dealt with family breaking over money.
- 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.
- 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 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.

That's absolutely ableist.

If we're not talking actual cognitive disability, like needing to live with some form of caretaker. Then that's kinda fucked up.

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 ;-)

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).

My brother is very smart, but he has other disabilities that nobody can see. My mom has already planned on willing his house to me so he can continue to live there.
On paper it may not look fair, but the alternative would lead to him being homeless, so it would be unethical to do otherwise.
- Couldn't the alternative be let the house to him? I don't see how you getting the house guarantees that he's not getting homeless.
  
  To qualify for some benefits you can't have any assets. The state forces you to sell your assets and pay for care before they will chip in.
  
  No, he doesn't have the capacity to take care of the basics to keep it. Playing the utilities, taxes, maintaining the property, etc.

The inheritance can be put into a special needs trust, to be used for the benefit of the child.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are some circumstances where it makes sense. If you have a disability in the US, you cannot have money or you’ll lose your benefits
- There are ways around this. Special needs trusts are very good tools. Not perfect but a good starting point for protecting a disabled adult while also providing for them.

Whatever the issue is, it clearly manifested long before the topic of inheritance came up

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.

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.

There's no one size fits all answer here, it's going to depend on how much money, how severe the childs disabilities are and what their care needs are, and what other sort of inheritance might be on the table ( for example one child gets the money and another child gets the house)
If the child is able to live on their own, then yeah, it's a dick move and the parents are just playing favorites and being ableist.
If they have significant care needs- nursing home, psychiatric treatment, home health aides, visiting nurses, etc. then there might be some logical arguments to be made. If they're already qualifying for some sort of government assistance then a large windfall of cash could potentially disrupt those benefits since they now have too much money to qualify.
That can be a real headache to navigate, they may need to arrange all new care for themselves, maybe switch doctors, find new housing, etc. which may be a lot for them to manage depending on the extent of their disabilities, and unless that inheritance is incredibly large it will probably run out at some point and leave them in a position where they need to navigate the system to get back on those government benefits, which is often no small feat.
So there could potentially be situations where it's better for them to not leave them money and cause significant disruptions to their care and living arrangements.
This is all totally hypothetical without knowing the specifics of the situation. There's a million different things to consider here and everyone's situation is unique, and at best we're getting one side of this story and don't really know what the parents thoughts and reasoning are since we haven't heard in directly from them (and it could very well be that their reason is just as shitty as it appears on the surface, I won't discount that possibility)
- You set up a trust (in the US they have a specific trust structure for disabled adults) and shield the beneficiary from the consequences of appearing to receive a disqualifying windfall.
  
  This is true, and I did think about mentioning that but decided to keep it brief because once I start talking about trusts I'd find myself out of my depth pretty quickly and probably open up a rabbit hole of other financial strategies I'm not prepared or qualified to go down (and also to keep my comment at a more readable length)
  But since we opened that can of worms (and like I said, this is getting out of my depth, so there's a very real possibility that some or all of what I have to say after this is wrong, so take it for what it's worth)
  We also don't know how much money we're talking about here. The line between qualifying for benefits and not can be razor thin sometimes, and while we might assume that we're talking about 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars or even more where a trust would absolutely make sense, we might actually only be talking about a couple thousand bucks, maybe not even enough to afford a couple months of rent depending on where you are, but potentially enough to fuck up someone's benefits depending on where some government bean counters drew the line. It might be difficult or impossible to find a financial institution willing to act as a trustee for such a small amount, and there may not be any individual they trust to fill that role, and once the lawyers and such are paid there may not even be much left over.
  There's also the possibility that the parents are counting on the sibling(s) to sort of act as trustees without putting it in writing. We don't know what their relationships and personalities are like, or what conversations they've had with their parents that maybe OP isn't privy to. There could be an understanding there that they're getting everything so that they can continue to provide for their disabled sibling after the parents are gone, and OP hasn't been made aware of that (some people are really uncomfortable talking about this kind of stuff and avoid it even though they really should) or misunderstood what the intention is. That of course depends on the siblings being trustworthy and generally having their shit together well enough, which isn't a given of course and their situation could change drastically.
  There's also the possibility that a trust is exactly what's happening and OP either misunderstood it or just plain doesn't like it. A lot of people out there are pretty clueless about financial matters. If the siblings were named as the trustee (it's often not a good idea to have the trustee be a close relative, but that's neither here nor there) I could see some people viewing the situation as "they left all the money to my siblings" because they're not getting a big one time payout and the money has to go through their siblings in some fashion.
  Again, I'm talking all in hypotheticals, there are countless "ifs," "ands" and "buts" here, we don't know the specifics of OPs situation so we can only speculate.

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.

I don't think that is OK and the parents I've known in situations like that would never have thought of it.

I didn't for a second read that and think you were the parent.

Yes it's ethical.
Family business : you want the steward to keep it going, maintain reputations, and support the family.
Large sums of money: look at lottery winners, many, many of them have really bad lives because they are not ready for the responsibility of managing it. If the child isn't ready for it....
There are options for children who arnt ready to inherit. Trusts, disbursements over time, annuities

could make a special needs trust.

It’s not ethical or unethical—but your framing makes it inherently from POV of some assholes, so it kinda renders the whole hypothetical moot.
People can allocate their assets as they please. Every situation is unique. In your situation, it sounds like the parents were narcissistic assholes with a disabled child.

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.

Maybe with better framing, but with the way you're explaining this (or maybe it's just that clear cut) the only realistic answer is "no".

Why don't you just write "children" instead of 'child(ren)" since this really isn't relevant if it's an only child receiving everything.
Are you the child in question, perchance?
To be clear, it's probably not ethical, but it's also their choice who gets what.
- Sorry, I know it can be annoying to read that, but its meant as a general question, rather than for a specific circumstance. The singular with plural modifiers in parentheses is what people typically use when the question/statement is not limited to meant only to apply if its that specific scenario with the specific singular/plural noun.
  
  No they don't typically do that despite your belief that they do. My point stands. If it were singular, the question would be moot.

If I may answer with an example. My sibling is very emotional and not as good as studying and has therefore received a decent amount of money for not only their entire education but also living expenses. Because I got a scholarship and work other jobs, I was on my own. I've always resented it as being punished for working harder.
IDK how I would handle it with my children because I want to give fair opportunities but from the child's perspective it is hard. Giving the same money would be best.

If you're cool with that kid killing themselves in your name then yeah.
Otherwise what the absolute fuck is wrong with you (not you, OP)? No. This 100% makes you a horrible human being who should have never procreated to begin with and you're a failure as a parent.

It being "ethical" and it being "okay" are two seperate things. Ethics is mostly subjective. Most people would say it is unethical though. It isn't illegal, you have the right to divide your assets as you wish, so that would make it "okay".
Differentiating based on mental illness and your perceived value of a person based on their mental health struggles is plain wrong and not based in reality, unless said person is at a point of needing a caretaker to get by. Especially since a bunch of illnesses are hereditary. Stuff like ADHD can manifest in different ways. My brother is both hyperactive and has attention deficit. I only have the attention deficit part. Both of us lead normal lives. Our parents dividing assets based on the fact that he has it worse on that front, and giving more to me, would be plain wrong and nonsensical. Especially since I'm absolutely shit with money, and he isn't.

I can't speak to whether or not it is "ok" unless I have a lot of knowledge of the situation.
I think the fairest way to split an inheritance is by need, although that's not always known at the time of drawing up a will.

I think it's their money and they can do anything they want with it.

Yes it's ethical. Their money, their choice. They can donate 100% to a charity you don't like and it would still be completely ethical.
- It's possible to spend your own money unethically. I don't think your argument is sound.
  
  If you find yourself spending your own money unethically then you tell that bad guy to stop it.
- tiny bit weird to riff off the “my body my choice” slogan used by women asking for rights for your own finance argument. speaking as someone who doesn’t want that phrase to become old hat or meaningless!
- donating 100% vs giving your smart kid 70% and your dumb kid 30% is much different. you'll understand if you're the 30%.
  
  I agree and both are ethical.

63 comments