Each Saturday there is a section in the Money Guardian called “In My Humble Opinion”. The question on 26th September was whether someone should leave their estate equally to their 2 children, both in their 30’s. One would use the money sensibly, the other is likely to fritter it away rapidly on drugs. The question was whether it is ever fair to discriminate between your children.
There was a deluge of emotional responses from people with first or second hand experience of unequal treatment between siblings, usually only discovered after the parent’s death. The impact is normally devastating, with siblings never talking to each other again, and a huge amount of bad feeling towards the deceased parent. For example one contributor, who was favoured in the Will said that her mother did it through spite.
It makes interesting reading, see http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2015/sep/19/will-inheritance-children-bequeath-discriminate
A way of dealing with this situation is to leave the estate equally to the children, but put the problem child’s share in trust.