Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!)
Dear Pay Dirt,
My wife “Mona” and I have two adult children who are in their early 30s. Recently our son told us something about his plans for the future that have my wife seeing red—and acting cruel.
My son informed us that that he doesn’t plan on having children. With the state of the world, I can’t say I blame him and respect his decision. Mona, on the other hand, is devastated. She and our daughter have a very strained relationship due to my wife being hyper-critical and punitive of her when she was growing up. We are lucky if we see our daughter’s two young kids more than a handful of times a year, and Mona was counting on our son providing us with grandkids we could be very involved with. Mona is so furious that now she wants to cut our son out of our will and leave everything to our daughter’s kids. I think this is absolutely the wrong thing to do and have said as much, but she won’t see reason. What can I do to make sure our son isn’t left out?
—Will Washout
Dear Will Washout,
Wow. Cutting a child out of your will because he doesn’t want to have children is punitive, shortsighted, and frankly cruel—and it will likely cause permanent damage to your relationship with your son if he ever found out, which he eventually would. Your instincts are right on the money.
I get that your wife is grieving. The future she imagined—a close relationship with grandchildren through your son—just disappeared. And because her relationship with your daughter is strained, largely by her own doing, she feels backed into a corner with nowhere to put that grief except anger. Your son is the target because he’s the one who just said no.
That doesn’t make her impulse right. It just makes it understandable and, to be clear, still very wrong. Is she self-aware enough to realize that your son watched how she treated her daughter and probably doesn’t want to risk that abuse raining down on his future children?
As for the paperwork, wills are meant to convey property and assets to your heirs. You are both parties to a will, and you both have a say in who gets what. If she wants to change the will, that requires both of your cooperation, and you can simply decline. For now. If Mona outlives you, she may (depending on how you set up the estate) have the ability to change heirs and bequests. Talk to your estate attorney and make sure you understand what either of you can and cannot do unilaterally. Protect your son’s interests as best you can now, before anything is changed in a moment of fury.
The next part is even harder: You need to talk to Mona about what’s driving her toward damaging her relationship with your son. She’s punishing him for a decision that has nothing to do with her, while the actual source of her pain is a daughter she alienated through her own behavior. That’s worth saying, gently but directly. Therapy—individually or together—might help her process what she’s actually feeling and redirect her anger to a more appropriate channel.
Your son made a reasonable, adult decision about his own life. While I’m sure you’re both sad, he deserves better than to be written out of the family for it.
—Ilyce
Classic Prudie
I am a white person who grew up without any faith and started practicing Buddhism during college. I attended a temple, studied the history, and genuinely followed it for 13 years. During that time I got a large om symbol tattooed on my hand, which admittedly was a fad. While Buddhism is still extremely near to my heart, I kind of let it go after having to move to an area with no temples. And as the conversation about cultural appropriation has developed, I’ve been feeling deep tattoo regret.