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Sharing financial resources is a zero sum game. Someone’s gain or increase is going to be someone else’s loss.
Do you think parents of adult children have an obligation to financially help the ones with children of their own more than the ones who do not have kids? Or do you think parents should always maintain total equality in the ways they divvy up their support to adult children?
I have been on one end of this dilemma for over 30 years. I’m the one who stayed married and raised a family. My sibling had a lavish wedding (in two locales), but quickly divorced and had no kids. She never found a career she enjoys and is frequently unemployed, despite being very highly educated.
Now I am temporarily (hopefully) on the other end of it. My son currently only has himself to take care of and my daughter is building her family.
Hypothetically, if you had 10K to share at Christmas, would you give each one 5K? Or would you take into account the selflessness and outrageously high cost of raising a child through college and tip the scale towards the parent?
I think maybe you can tell which way I lean, but I know that there are strong counter arguments.
If you’re childless and found out your parents gave your sibling more money than you in their estate plans, how would you feel? Would you feel as if they didn’t value your life as much as theirs? Or would you understand that grandchildren were factored in?
What about an opposite situation, where parents support a single, childless adult daughter more than another one who had the benefit of a husband’s income? Do singles deserve more support than those who married and raised children?
Curious for your thoughts.
50 Happens 
A very long time ago my grandmother gave away $10k each Christmas as a tax deduction, and she always gave it to (unmarried) me and not to my married sister. It really ticked my sister off. Our mom tried to explain it by guessing that old-fashioned thinking was that my sister was taken care of financially (she actually really was) whereas I was a loose cannon; it could be I would never earn a cent of my own and never marry. It was logical I would receive money and she would not. I was happy for it and went along with the reasoning. My sister was mad for the rest of her life. She changed her last name after her divorce not to the last name she started with (same as that grandmother) but to the other side of the family, and when she died I found photos of us with that grandmother—with that grandmother’s image bent back or cut out. She was pissed forever, even though she was wealthy and I was not.
Seems to me now that the only fair thing—in that situation—was for the money to have been divided equally. Who knows what’s going to happen, and really who cares. It’s not for us to try to guess or to judge. Just divide it up and be done with the thinking about it.
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A very long time ago my grandmother gave away $10k each Christmas as a tax deduction, and she always gave it to (unmarried) me and not to my married sister. It really ticked my sister off. Our mom tried to explain it by guessing that old-fashioned thinking was that my sister was taken care of financially (she actually really was) whereas I was a loose cannon; it could be I would never earn a cent of my own and never marry. It was logical I would receive money and she would not. I was happy for it and went along with the reasoning. My sister was mad for the rest of her life. She changed her last name after her divorce not to the last name she started with (same as that grandmother) but to the other side of the family, and when she died I found photos of us with that grandmother—with that grandmother’s image bent back or cut out. She was pissed forever, even though she was wealthy and I was not.
Seems to me now that the only fair thing—in that situation—was for the money to have been divided equally. Who knows what’s going to happen, and really who cares. It’s not for us to try to guess or to judge. Just divide it up and be done with the thinking about it.
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Thanks so much for sharing that personal story Shelly. A powerful argument to divide equally, no matter what.
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