re: All this inheritance talk has me curious, fill all the cup equally? Or fill it the same?

I’ve worked for estate sale companies for years and have seen every situation. Families can be WRECKED when parents leave assets distributed unequally. Spend it all before you die, leave it all to charity, or spit it EVENLY between the kids. Not the grandkids., they can inherit in turn from their parents, or their parents may choose to pass down grannies $$ right away, but don’t you skip your kids for your grandkids. The sibling without kids gets screwed, or the one with 6 kids gets the lions share.

If one kid has less than another, it doesn’t matter. Leave it equally distributed, and maybe the more well off kids help the poorer sibling…but it should be their choice. A lot of times the poorer sibling made poor choices, and it shouldn’t be successful siblings loss to have little golden child ne’er do well get rewarded for their "grasshopper fiddling while the ants worked" ways.

One thing I see in almost 100% of cases is that the IN LAW fights tooth and nail for money, and they are not even the heir. If a man has four siblings , his WIFE, who is not an heir, will stick her nose in it and demand her husband get every cent coming to him. Same if a woman is the heir, her husband will demand she fight for every penny. That is what disgusts me. Spouses of heirs should stay completely out of the entire process.

An heir who will blow through the $$ in six months then come begging siblings for help can have a trust set up that gives them a monthly amount so that doesn’t happen. One sale I worked on, an only child , useless 50 something year old living at home, had just that done by his mom. He was PISSED but she knew he would blow it all and be homeless in a year, so she had him get payments instead of a lump sum. Encourage your parents to do that for the family black sheep so you aren’t dealing with "because familyyyyy ……" pleas within a year or two.

Now, if one of the kids is doing jail time for murder, has abused the folks, or there is some COMPELLING reason to make it uneven, then that is on a case by case basis. Overall, I advise leaving it even between the next generation only ( no skipping gens, or making grandkids equal heirs to kids)

Things get really complicated these days…with step kids, half siblings, etc etc…."your, mine and ours" situations….i would hate to deal with that complicated scenario…

I only know that favoring kids for "because little jimmy isn’t a doctor like Buddy" or “Janie married a rich man, so Susie should get more" will lead to resentment in most cases, and destroy the family ties. Don’t do it.