Grandparents cut off prejudiced grandson from $18K inheritance after Thanksgiving. AITA?
When this grandmother is hugely disappointed in her grandson, she asks Reddit:
"AITA For Writing my prejudiced Grandson Out of Our Will?"
Apologies for any formatting issues, I’m typing this up on my phone. Recently I (62 F) and my husband (64 M) have been making end-of-life plans so that we don’t have to stress later on. For context, we are moderately wealthy and plan to leave lots of it to our grandkids. My husband and I have two kids, Ami (43 F) and Paul (40 M).
Paul has two kids, but they are not relevant to this story. Ami has three kids with her husband Josh: Sarah (21 F), Jack (21 M), and Shaun (18 M). My husband and I plan to leave $18,000 to each grandchild for them to spend as they please.
At Thanksgiving this year, Jack came out as gay and introduced us to his boyfriend Gavin (21 M). Everyone in the family was very supportive and things went over smooth. In the weeks that followed, however, I heard from Ami that Shaun was making off-hand comments and expressing homophobic views.
My husband and I recently learned the extent of it as Jack has said he will be seeing Gavin’s family for Christmas. This has caused a lot of drama and so I reached out to Jack to get more details.
To sum things up, Shaun had been making comments about how Jack had dated girls in the past and implied he was faking being gay for “political clout” (Jack works in politics/local government and is studying PolySci).
This was just the tip of the iceberg, as Jack had also gotten screenshots from Sarah of texts Shaun had sent her insulting Gavin and Jack, and saying he had to bite his tongue at Thanksgiving.
My husband and I were obviously stunned, and we called Shaun to hear what he had to say. He said that he is sorry for nothing, and doubled down by calling Jack a liar and making implications about his se% life.
I was horrified, and after talking it over with my husband we decided to remove Shaun’s $18,000 dollars from the will and we are debating what to do with it. Sarah and Jack will get their $18K, not Shaun.
When we broke the news, Ami and Josh asked us to reconsider. They said that Shaun is young and probably going through a phase motivated by his friends/social media. I considered this to be a weak excuse and deferred back to Jack, who said he agrees with me & my husband’s decision and is thankful.
Sarah has told me that she agrees with us, but warned that Christmas will be awkward and we need to smooth things out now. After thinking about it for a bit more, me and my husband decided to turn here to get a third party’s opinion. So, AITA for cutting my homophobic son out of our will?
Let's see what readers thought.
sunshineshoulders6 writes:
NTA, as it’s your money to whatever you want with it. You could light it on fire in front of everyone and still not be the AH.
That being said, I’ve never understood needing to make announcements regarding wills and changes to wills, especially when there are going to be strong feelings about it. As none of your decisions will be relevant until your passing and could change a few times between now and then, why does anyone need to know?
Again - your money, your decision - however, it feels like an attempt to control behavior and/or be more involved in the punishment than you are as grandparents.
This decision, and making it known, will almost certainly sever your relationship with Shaun, but also put him beyond any chance of realizing how wrong and hurtful his words are. Not saying that’s even going to happen, but he is still young and dumb, so there’s hope for change.
youthinas writes:
First of all, you are the assholes for telling everybody what they are gonna get when you die- and holding it over their heads. You are holding it over their heads-you know you are. Behave- or you get disinherited..
You are stirring up drama. Of course Christmas is gonna be awkward. Of course the money is yours to distribute as you want. And Shaun is being vile. Go ahead- disinherit him.
Maybe Shaun, with his little opinions will grow up and he may become a better person. Later. And you can add him back to your will. Later. Again- you don’t need to tell the family about it. You don’t need their input, they don’t need to be kept in the loop, you don’t need their permission. ESH, you and Shaun.
twistedq writes:
YTA. I went back and forth on this. Your intent is pure, but you may be throwing the baby out with the bath water on this. The kid is 18 and is as likely to be going through a misguided phase as he is harboring true feelings of hate. It could even be more sibling rivalry than homophobia. If there is already resentment, just wait until he finds out.
I feel like the steps that are missing here are assessment and rehabilitation. Are these truly deep seated beliefs? How long has he felt this way? Is he always going to feel this way? Is there no point when he grows out of it or learns tolerance?
Furthermore, are you fully disowning your grandchild? Are they disallowed from visiting? Are you going to not buy them Christmas presents? No more birthday cards? Where is the line that you're drawing? His homophobia still gets him birthday presents but the big cash prize is right out?
I want to emphasize that you're right to want to do something. But the thing to do is may not be "F you, you nasty little hateful %%%". You may need to wait it out a little and reassess.
On a tangential note, maybe none of your grand kids should get anything, and your estate should be split amongst your two kids. It sounds like you have plenty to share, but when it comes to estate planning, "fairness" can become a big issue, and creating imbalances in familial portions can get people heated fast.
You don't need Paul getting angry at Ami because their family ends up with more money in the end. And it doesn't really account for future changes. What if you end up with more grandkids? Are you just assuming it's all done and settled? You'll have time to do it later if something changes? Seems more like estate feeling than estate planning.