say about your relationship with your children?
The Emotional Question: Should You?
The legal question — whether you can disinherit an estranged child — may have a relatively clear answer in a particular jurisdiction. The more difficult question is whether you should. This is deeply personal, and no answer is universally right.
Some parents choose to disinherit estranged children entirely, citing the unfairness of rewarding behavior that caused them significant pain, the desire to redirect their assets to children or grandchildren with whom they have maintained loving relationships, or the feeling that leaving money to someone who wanted nothing to do with them during life would feel inconsistent with their experience.
For these parents, the estate plan may become a reflection of the relationships and values that shaped their lives rather than an attempt to preserve an idealized image of family.
Other parents choose to leave something to estranged children because their
