I was favoured in the will, – and it’s torn us all apart
IAs more parents choose one child over the others in their legacies, one anonymous writer tells of the anguish it can cause fit neatly into one of the categories the estateplanning experts Slater and Gordon identified this week in their report to explain why parents are increasingly favouring some children over others in their wills. I was always my parents’ pet child, the middle one between two sisters. It wasn’t something I sought out. I have just always been closer to my mother and father, whereas the other two have been much more distant since they were teenagers.
Because of this, I am set to benefit much more on the death of my parents than either of my siblings.
Like many middle-class families, we were very good at putting on an act of being loving and together. Then my father developed dementia in his early seventies. He needed a huge amount of care and couldn’t be left on his own at the old farmhouse where we had all grown up in the Sussex countryside.
My Mum was his main carer until he went into a home 18 months ago. I was so worried about them both that I’d head down there every other weekend to try to take some of the strain off her. One of my sisters lived much closer, but had a husband and children which she said didn’t leave her enough time to visit more than a couple of times a year. The younger one was so wrapped up in her erratic life that she visited even less.
It wasn’t that I had an enormous amount of time either. I don’t have children, but I do have a demanding job and partner in London. As my parents’ situation deteriorated, I ended up using weeks of my annual leave to do what I could for them.
When the three of us were in our twenties, they sat us down and talked about their will. Their estate was going to be split equally. Everyone accepted that.
But as my father grew more infirm, I felt responsible and began to challenge my sisters to pull their weight. I can still recall the day when one said to me: “We know why you are doing all this. You want to get the house.”
She even knew how much it was worth and what her share would be. I felt so outraged that she thought I was helping them just to get my hands on their money that we ended up not speaking for almost a year.
I am giving up a part of my life, and my freedom, to do my siblings’ share of