So, my Dad's mother has an inheritance lined up for me, my brother and my father for when she dies. I don't know the exact number but I do know it's a rather substantial amount and I also know I want nothing to do with it. The main reason I want nothing to do with this large sum of money I should be excited about is because it'd make me ineligible for my healthcare and other benefits I receive. But another reason I want nothing to do with this money is because frankly, I just don't like this woman. All my life, about the only thing she's ever done is make me feel uncomfortable. I know it's sad, that I feel this way about my only living grandparent, but it's absolutely true. I just don't want this money. My Mom's mom, my other grandmother, always thought that I liked my Dad's mom better than her and it makes me immeasurably sad knowing that she died thinking this. Had I known my Mom's mom thought this, I would have told her that that was never the case. But now there's nothing I can ever do about it. Anyway, I read a good article here: https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/how-to-refuse-an-inheritance about refusing inheritances. But the main question I have is, is there a way I can refuse the inheritance and give it to somebody else? I'd like to give it to my Mom, to help her pay the mortgage on our house. I also think that would be great because my Mom and my Dad's mother never got along and there was a lot of animosity between the two of them and for Nana's inheritance she intends to go to me to go straight into my Mom's pockets would be a great way to the path of redemption for never getting to tell my Mom's mom that I always liked her better than my Dad's mom. Does anyone have any experience in this field? I just really don't want this money and the lady is 84 years old and you just never know what's going to happen any day so I want to be prepared with the proper paperwork at hand.
Inheritance laws depends on the country you are in and even potentially the state. Where I am from you wouldn't be able to refuse the inheritance yet give it to your mom as you would essentially be changing her will. If you refuse the inheritance it's likely the money will be re-distributed to her other beneficiaries (her children as well as your brother/cousins). If you want your mom to have the money I think the only way to do it is to accept the inheritance and give it to her or better yet, pay the mortage for her but change the paperwork so the house is in your name but giving her a life-long right to live in the house (meaning she will be mortgage free and the house will belong to you so you will have this safety net in the future). If you are to inherit a big sum of money that could pay off a mortgage I would definitely invest in real estate and rent it out, so you wouldn't be depend on benefits to survive and would have continued stream of income coming in that you could reinvest.
Inheritance laws are complicated and while I loath lawyers, your best bet is to talk to one. Plus there is a thing called "inheritance tax" and depending on the state you live in it can be pretty damn substantial. Like the state of Connecticut takes 40% of your inheritance.
The solution here might be to see if your dad's mother would be willing to will the money into a trust. This is complicated and something to discuss with an attorney, but there may be a way to have the beneficiary be the person that's taxed instead of you. So, in other words, the money comes in from your dad's mother's estate, but flows out to your mother and never is in your control, and thus, should not cound as income to you. For that matter, it might also be possible to have the money held in the estate and doled out to you in small amounts that would not impact your benefits. I wouldn't necessarily reject the money though; even if you don't like the person it's coming from, consider that it is her intent to do something good for you, and even if you don't particularly like her, consider the value of the benefit and not just whether or not you like her. If your dad's mother is well to do, she probably has an estate planning attorney you could talk to about this. That would be my recommendation.
In the UK this can be done by completing a 'Deed of Variation', and is a relatively straightforward process.
I'll have to talk it over with my Dad. I just don't want anything to do with this money because it's going to complicate my already complicated life. My brother has said it's probably not more than twenty five grand, but he's the most fiscally conservative person in the family. He's a total miser. My Mom seems to think it could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, though. Nobody really knows because my Dad's mom is very secretive, just like everyone on my Dad's side of the family, including my brother and my Dad. I'm on government assistance and I don't want to screw myself up by accepting this inheritance because my life is a train wreck and I don't need a nuke hitting the train wreck on top of everything. I don't drive a grown up car so I can't just drive to a lawyer's office and ask about these things. And I'm sure my Dad would be extremely touchy about this whole thing. I guess I could disclaim the inheritance and redistribute it to my brother and ask him to give what would have been my cut to Mom, but that could pose a problem because my brother hates my Mom and refused to give her anything to begin with.
I just noticed this in your message now, for some reason. My brother and my Dad, who keep me out of the loop have already talked with Nana's lawyer and my brother said that my inheritance will in fact be given to me in small amounts, where my brother and my Dad will be getting it all at once. I didn't know that by doing that it wouldn't impact my benefits. That's good to know, actually. By the time Nana passes away the cost of living adjustment will be much higher, I think and I'll be able to give the money I get to my Mother to pay our mortgage in a much more substantial way. As much as I rely on the government, I'm also terrified of them, particularly the United States Postal Service. I wonder if I can receive the money in cash? That would make things a lot less complicated.
Whatever you do, be very careful not to let anyone who is not explicitly named in the will know that you're getting the money. When my grandparents on one side of the family died, they had all of their money in a trust like Chip suggested. However, we still got sued by a particular other family member who was disinherited years beforehand for the money. She claimed that we somehow forced and coerced them to rewrite the will to disinherit her and keep the money ourselves, and tried to get the will amended back to what it previously said when she was still in it years earlier. We got served lawsuit papers full of total lies, because it was a lot of money and she was mad she wasn't included. We won, but that stupidity wasted about 3 years and $120,000 in legal fees which were automatically taken out of the trust itself, just because the wrong person learned about it.
The only person who (probably) isn't in the will who knows about this is my Mom, who I want to have the money anyway.
That really sucks, and all things considered, your family didn't do as badly as some. I have a friend who had a similar situation with a high-value estate, and a couple of shady relatives **who were included in the will** but didn't feel their share was appropriate. The will even had language that anyone who contested the will for any reason was automatically disinherited and not entitled to anything, and specifically prohibited the executor from settling any such claim (the person setting up the will was a hardass with people who act like assholes) ... but apparently such clauses aren't enforceable in California. So this matter cost in the mid-hundreds of thousands, and ended up with a settlement. Money can bring out the absolute worst in people.
Right, well, like I said, I do know that I'll be receiving my inheritance in "small pieces," as my brother put it. I just hope they're small enough or I'm going to have to disclaim the whole thing unless I can request a smaller amount if the amount offered is too high, which, knowing Nana, it is, because she's a Republican and hates welfare and sees any sort of social service (even private schools for troubled kids) as an abomination. I think I should be able to negotiate a smaller amount if the amount is too high, right? I don't know how these things work.
I'm not in the US so this might be a naive question, but why would you turn down an inheritance of hundreds of thousands in order to keep your benefits rather than taking the money and being able to pay for health insurance (or whatever) yourself?
Because if you make over a certain amount, whether that be from work, or receiving an inheritance, if you just go the slightest bit over the poverty line, they take away your Obamacare. Then you have more money, but still not enough money to pay for any kind of health insurance. This is why I don't like Obama, for as much of an unapologetic socialist I am, Obama was a CORPORATE AND ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRAT. Sure, he got gay marriage legalized in all fifty states and he killed Osama Bin Laden, but what else is there to his legacy? Now his former VP, Joe Biden, who has gone on record saying he wants to freeze and slash social security, Medicare and Medicaid and end veteran's benefits is about to steal the nomination for President in 2020, giving us four more years of Trump because nobody in their right mind would vote for Biden. Besides, an inheritance isn't unlimited, it only lasts so long and you can only pay for so many months, weeks or even days worth of healthcare in it because we have a system run by Republican brownshirts. It's Hildog all over again, it really is.
Skipping through the whole Obama/Obamacare situation as to not start a debate, but technically if you were to inherit hundreds of thousands of dollars even if let's say you were burning money right, left and center and wasn't really investing it correctly in order to keep the cash flow coming in and ran out within 10 years, wouldn't you effectively be eligible for benefits again once you ran out of money and came back to the same amount of money you had before the inheritance? If so then why wouldn't you accept the inheritance, use it, and then go back to benefits? (out of curiosity)
You lose eligibility for Medicaid (free medical care for low income people, in the states that subscribe to it), but you don't lose eligibility for subsidized medical care through the Obamacare subsidies. So if you're just barely over the Medicaid line, you'd be eligible for a large Obamacare subsidy, and the monthly cost of insurance might be $50 or something. I know many people who are in that exact situation. (rest of inaccurate off-topic political bullshit rant snipped)
I don't think it works that way. It has something to do with taxes and the amount of taxes filed. This country does everything in its power to screw poor people because of our governing means of production: capitalism. I don't think that even if you ran out of money that you'd be eligible for benefits again for a long time, if ever. This is why I'm so hesitant to accept any money from anyone. I don't want my healthcare to be taken away. In order to have the healthcare I have, I basically have to promise the United States government that I'll stay unemployed or underemployed and file only a tiny percentage of taxes, if any. This is the flaw in Obama's system and why so many people choose to go without any healthcare at all. I'm a supporter of universal healthcare, which the rest of the world has, but America does not because like I said, the majority of the government is run by brownshirts.
