I want to give my money to my grandkids – but my children want it for themselves

When parents divide money between their children, equal can seem like the obvious definition of fair. But real families are rarely that simple. Over the years, people have told me stories about inheritances, financial help and family decisions that have left siblings feeling grateful, guilty, overlooked or resentful. Often, nobody has behaved particularly badly. They have simply had different ideas about what fairness means. Karen, 88, knows this only too well. Her two daughters are now in very different financial positions, Donna has been sensible with money, and moves into retirement with good investments. Sally, the youngest, lived for today, with just a small private pension and worries about how she will manage when she stops her part-time job. Over the years, Sally received considerably more financial help from their parents than her sister Donna: support through university, clothes, holidays and help when money was tight. Shorts Donna became independent very young. “Donna was always the one who just got on with things,” Karen says. “If she needed something, she found a way of paying for it. Her sister was much more likely to come to us and say she couldn’t afford something, and of course we helped.” Looking back, Karen estimates the difference could run into tens of thousands of pounds. “I do feel guilty about it sometimes. It wasn’t that we loved one of them more. It was just that one asked for help and one didn’t.” Karen has consequently talked about leaving Donna, who received less during her lifetime, a larger share of her estate. But Donna doesn’t want her to. “She has said to me, ‘No, we’re in different circumstances now. Just divide it equally.'” It leaves Karen wondering what fairness actually requires. “Part of me thinks I should make up for what happened before. But then I think, am I supposed to add up everything I’ve ever spent on each of them? Where would you even start?” Lucy, 55, has encountered a rather different solution in her own family. She and her brother will eventually share their mother’s estate equally, including the value of her home. Yet, their financial circumstances are very different: Lucy’s brother has considerably more wealth than she does. Her mother has not tried to compensate for that by changing the division of the house. Instead, Lucy knows that some of the possessions within it will come to her, including highly collectable vintage Ercol furniture and jewellery that she particularly values. Her brother is perfectly happy with this; the furniture and jewellery aren’t to his taste. “The house will still be divided equally between us,” she says. For Lucy, that feels fairer than trying to put a precise monetary value on the difference between their circumstances. “I don’t think everything has to be worked out to the last pound. Some things have a value because you love them or because they’ve always been part of the family.” It is a reminder that an inheritance is not simply a sum of money. Furniture, jewellery, pictures and other possessions can carry memories and emotional value that bear little relationship to what they would fetch at auction. And then there is care. I have heard plenty of stories from the child who stayed nearby. They are the one taking Mum or Dad to hospital, sorting out prescriptions, doing the shopping, responding to emergencies and giving up weekends while a brother or sister lives hundreds of miles away. Jayne, 73, described the resentment she felt when, after years of being the person her father relied upon, the estate was divided equally. “I know my brother was his child just as much as I was,” she told me, “but I was the one who was there. I gave years of my life to looking after Dad. My brother could come down for a visit and then go home again. When everything was divided exactly in half, I remember thinking: did none of what I did count?” For the sibling living further away, there may be an entirely different story. Work, geography, children and other responsibilities can all make caring difficult. But after years of unequal responsibility, an equal inheritance does not necessarily feel equal. Patrick, 69, faced a different version of that dilemma. He was one of six children in a large Irish family. His mother had wanted him, as the eldest son, to inherit her house. “I didn’t think that was right,” he says. “My sister was living there with Mum and she didn’t have a house of her own. I had somewhere to live. The others did too. She needed it.” His view was that his sister should have the house. “For me it wasn’t about dividing everything into six equal pieces. What would have been the point if that meant she lost her home?” His sister subsequently kept the house, with token payments to her siblings. I encountered another version of this dilemma in my own family many years ago. When my grandmother died, she did not want her relatively modest amount of money to go to her children. She believed it should skip a generation and go directly to her grandchildren, and only to the eldest grandchild in each family. That meant me and my cousin. Our younger sisters would receive nothing. The amount involved was not life-changing, around £5,000, but my mother did not think that was fair. “You’re sharing it with your sister,” I was told. So, I did. I’ve sometimes thought about it since, because every generation involved had a different definition of fairness. My grandmother believed her money should bypass her own children and benefit the next generation, and that the eldest grandchildren should receive it. My mother believed sisters should be treated equally. And I accepted her view. Today, the question of skipping a generation has become particularly interesting because the financial circumstances of parents, children and grandchildren can be so different. Margaret, 81, has been considering giving some of her money directly to her grandchildren rather than leaving everything to her adult children. Her children are approaching retirement. They own their homes and have pensions. Her grandchildren are in their twenties, paying high rents and struggling to imagine how they will ever save enough for a deposit. “I keep thinking, what’s the point of them getting this money when they’re old?” Margaret says. “They need it now. If I can give them enough to help them towards a deposit, it could change their lives.” To Margaret, the logic is compelling. “My children aren’t rich, but they’ve got houses. They’ve got pensions. They’ve had the chance to build something up. It’s so much harder for the grandchildren.” Her children are less convinced. “They don’t particularly like the idea of being skipped,” she admits. “They’ve worked all their lives, too, and I think they’d quite like some extra money to enjoy their retirement.” That leaves Margaret caught between two generations, both of whom could make perfectly reasonable claims. “I don’t want anyone thinking I love them less because I’ve given somebody else more. But I also don’t see why I should wait until I’m dead to help the people who need it now.” Perhaps that is why inheritance becomes so emotionally loaded. It is rarely just about the money. A difference of £10,000 can be interpreted as evidence of who was loved more, who did more, who mattered more or who a parent believed deserved more. The moment parents begin taking differences into account, equality disappears. But that does not necessarily make the decision unfair. Perhaps the more useful question isn’t whether every child or grandchild receives precisely the same amount. It is whether the person making the decision has thought carefully about what they mean by fair, and whether the family understands their reasoning. Because there can be perfectly good reasons for giving one person more than another. But if those reasons are never discussed, the people left behind may create explanations of their own. And those explanations can last much longer than the money. Dr Denise Taylor is a chartered psychologist and author who writes about later life and exploring meaning beyond full-time work. Her latest book, ‘ThriveSpan: Walking Gently Into What Matters Now’ is out now