Will I, won’t I? How to sort out a large inheritance
Torn between rights and obligations, a long-suffering widower agonises over how to divvy up his assets, while an aunt’s growing nest egg is in danger of being squandered. This month we are talking about inheritance on Ethi-call.
Disclaimer: The cases shared here are fictional accounts of typical dilemmas faced by callers who use The Ethics Centre’s free helpline Ethi-call. This is not a substitute for an Ethi-call counselling session.
Inheritance is a sticky issue. No matter your role – the writer of the will, the executor, the recipient, or the advisor – each individual has a view of how important justice, fairness, obligations, or rights are in making their decisions. If you’re lucky, these views are shared among all involved. At Ethi-call, The Ethics Centre’s free counselling service for ethical dilemmas, we know they usually aren’t.
Take this typical scenario:
Peter is a widower with two children in their late 40s. His daughter is a university educated high earner with a husband and two children. His son doesn’t have qualifications and although he works hard, he changes jobs frequently, never having found a satisfying career path. He is divorced and also has two children.
Peter has a degenerative disease and knows he will not live to see his grandchildren grow up. His will provides a 50/50 split of his assets between his children but he feels his son needs more help.
Peter tried talking with his daughter about this but she was upset he was considering treating them differently. She said she should not be penalised for her hard work and her brother is not entitled more because of his own life choices. Peter loves both his children and doesn’t want his daughter to feel undervalued. Some of his friends have even said she deserves more than half as a reward for the disciplined life she’s led. His wife who died four years ago wanted to make sure all her grandchildren were provided for generously and Peter wants his will to be fair, without causing pain or ill will. He just can’t see how he can achieve this. He is very distressed about the decision he has to make.
Ethics asks, “What ought one do?” I put to you, “What should Peter do?” He knows he must consider everyone who might be impacted by his decision and he has already identified the following:
- Wanting to be fair and equal to his children
- The capacity for inheritance to be perceived as a reward or punishment
- His role as a grandfather and the duty he feels to support his grandchildren
- An absolute desire to preserve his relationship with his children and their relationship with each other
If Peter were to contact Ethi-call, some questions he might be asked include:
- What is the purpose of a will?
- What has been your experience of receiving inheritance in the past and do you think it was handled well?
- What are the religious or cultural norms that guide your decisions in life?
There is no doubt his children may each desire different outcomes. But if he has to choose, what is most important to him when allocating his estate?
At least for Peter’s children, his final wishes will be sorted before he passes away. What if the writer of the will is already gone, and the family can only guess what the intentions were behind it?
Take this situation:
Before Sarah’s mother died, she said she wanted her young granddaughter Alexis to inherit a significant sum of money when she turned 18. She asked her only daughter Sarah, Alexis’ aunty, to be trustee of the funds until she turned 18 because Alexis’ father had passed away. Sarah’s investing has seen the funds grow significantly. Alexis’ maturity? Not so much.
Now months away from being eligible to receive her inheritance, Sarah is concerned about Alexis’ behaviour. She dropped out of school, is not working, and smokes a lot of pot. Sarah hopes this is just a phase but sees Alexis’ mum in her and worries it might just be her personality or chosen path.
Alexis and her mum struggle financially. Sarah has no idea how they get by and can see a cash injection could relieve pressure. But she is also concerned they won’t have the willpower, skills, or knowledge to look after the funds appropriately. She believes the signs show if Alexis doesn’t squander it, her mum will.
Sarah is torn between her duty to fulfil her mother’s wishes and her loyalty to her and her memory. She was a woman with a strong work ethic, who was dedicated to growing her personal wealth through prudence and patience. Sarah has every intention of following the requirements of the will, but she is struggling with how much control she is entitled to. What ought Sarah do?
- Should she try and help Alexis learn about money management?
- Is it her right to make suggestions around how the money is invested or saved?
- Whose wishes matter most – Sarah’s deceased mother, Sarah as trustee, Alexis, or Alexis’ mother?
Sarah is a woman of integrity and will respect Alexis’ right to inherit the money. But is there a way she can fulfil her mother’s wishes and do the best she can to ensure Alexis respects her legacy?
Both of these fictional cases depict someone struggling with what to do in a situation. An Ethi-call counsellor will never tell someone what to do. Instead, they follow a framework developed by The Ethics Centre over the last 25 years. This framework is driven by a wide range of questions that can often help unpack a dilemma in a way that the caller was not able to do on their own. And while a counsellor may seem to ask a lot of questions at first, there is a reason for them.
Struggling with inheritance can feel like being inside the home of the loved one you have lost. Memories, treasures, and sentimental trinkets pull you in multiple directions. But every house has a door. And every dilemma has a beginning.
There is no magic dust to make what is difficult, easy. But Ethi-call can help you find relief with understanding. A counsellor’s impartial and expert advice can be a guiding hand through neglected corridors and cobwebbed cupboards. Sometimes, someone removed from the trauma of a loved one’s death is exactly who you need to help you make your way through what is one of life’s hardest challenges.
Tough decisions are part of being human. We can help. Let us show you how. Book your free Ethi-call session here.Sally Murphy is an Ethi-call counsellor and manager of education programs at The Ethics Centre.
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Big Thinker: Confucius
Confucius (551 BCE—479 BCE) was a scholar, teacher, and political adviser who used philosophy as a tool to answer what he considered to be the two most important questions in life… What is the right way to rule? And what is the right way to live?
While he never wrote down his teachings in a systematic treatise, bite sized snippets of his wisdom were recorded by his students in a book called the Analects.
Underpinning Confucian philosophy was a deeply held conviction that there is a virtuous way to behave in all situations and if this is adhered to society will be harmonious. Confucius established schools where he gave lectures about how to maintain political and personal virtue.
“It is virtuous manners which constitute the excellence of a neighborhood.”
His ideas set the agenda for political and moral philosophy in China for the next two millennia and are emerging once again as an influential school of thought.
Humble beginnings
Confucius was born in 551 BC in a north-eastern province of China. His father and mother died before he was 18, leaving him to fend for himself. While working as a shepherd and bookkeeper to survive, Confucius made time to rigorously study classic texts of ancient Chinese literature and philosophy.
At the age of 30, Confucius began teaching some of the foundational concepts he formulated through his studies. He developed a loyal following and quickly rose up the political ranks, eventually becoming the Prime Minister of his province.
But at the age of 55 he was exiled after offending a higher ranking official. This gave Confucius an opportunity to travel extensively around China, advising government officials and spreading his teachings.
He was eventually invited back to his home province and was allowed to re-establish his school, which grew to a size of 3000 students by the time he died at age 72.
The golden age
Underpinning much of Confucius’ thought was a belief that Chinese society had forgotten the wisdom of the past and that it was his duty to reawaken the people, particularly the young, to these ancient teachings.
Confucius idealised the historical Western Zhou Dynasty, a time, he claimed, when living standards were high, people lived and worked in peace and contentment, the leaders carried out their duties in accordance with their rank, and the social order was stable and harmonious.
Confucius devoted his life to teaching the wisdom of this ancient society to his contemporaries in the hope of reinventing it in the present. For this reason, he didn’t claim to be an original thinker, but a receptacle of past wisdom. “I transmit but do not innovate”, he said.
Dao, de, and ren
While Confucius never wrote a systematic philosophical treatise, there are three intertwined concepts that run through his philosophy: Dao, De, and Ren.
Dao: Confucius interpreted Dao to mean a Way of living, or more specifically the right Way of living. This was not a concept he made up. It was already a central part of Chinese belief systems about the natural order of the universe. Dao is a slippery but profound concept suggesting there is a singular Way to live that can be intuited from the universe, and that all of life should be directed towards living this Way. If the Way is followed, the individual and society will be in perfect harmony.
De: Confucius saw De as a type of virtue that lay latent in all humans but that had to be cultivated. It was the cultivation of this virtue, Confucius believed, that allowed a person to follow the Way. It was in family life that people learned how to cultivate and practice virtuous behaviours. In fact, many of the main Confucian virtues were derived from familial relationships. For example, the relationship between father and son defined the virtue of piety and the relationship between older and younger siblings defined the virtue of respect. For this reason, Confucian ethics did not leave much room for an individual to exist outside of a family structure. Knowing where you stood in your family and your society was key to living a virtuous life.
Ren: While most Confucian virtues were cultivated within a strict social and family structure, ren was a virtue that existed outside this dynamic. It can be translated loosely as benevolence, goodness, or human-heartedness.
Confucius taught that the ren person is one who has so completely mastered the Way that it becomes second nature to them. In this sense ren is not so much about individual actions but what type of person you are. If you perform your familial duties but do not do so with benevolence, then you are not virtuous. Ren was how something was done, rather than the act itself.
Contemporary influence and relevance
Confucius’ influence on Chinese society during his life and in the two millennia since has been enormous. His sound bite like philosophies became China’s handbook on politics and its code of personal morality.
“He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.”
It wasn’t until Mao’s Cultural Revolution that some of the basic tenets of Confucian ethics were publicly denounced for the first time. Mao was future oriented and utopian in his politics, and so Confucius’ idea of governance and ethics based in the ancient classics was considered dangerous and subversive. In fact, Mao’s Red Guards referred to the old sage as “The Number One Hooligan Old Kong”.
But in the past decade, the Communist Party has realised Confucius’ teachings might be useful again. The surge of wealth that has accompanied free market capitalism in China has meant that many of Mao’s ideologies no longer make sense for the government. This has prompted a resurgence of State led interest in Confucius as an alternative ideological underpinning for the current government.
While this is seen by many as a way for China to build a political future based on its philosophical past, others feel that the Communist Party has emphasised Confucian ideas about hierarchical social structure and obedience, while sidelining notions of virtue and benevolence.
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Ethics Explainer: Universal Basic Income
The idea of a UBI isn’t new. In fact, it has deep historical roots.
In Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516, he writes that instead of punishing a poor person who steals bread, “it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody’s under the frightful necessity of becoming, first a thief, and then a corpse”.
Over three hundred years later, John Stuart Mill also supported the concept in Principles of Political Economy, arguing that “a certain minimum [income] assigned for subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable of labour or not” would give the poor an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
In the 20th century, the UBI gained support from a diverse array of thinkers for very different reasons. Martin Luther King, for instance, saw a guaranteed payment as a way to uphold human rights in the face of poverty, while Milton Friedman understood it as a viable economic alternative to state welfare.
Would a UBI encourage laziness?
Yet, there has always been strong opposition to implementing basic income schemes. The most common argument is that receiving money for nothing undermines work ethic and encourages laziness. There are also concerns that many will use their basic income to support drug and alcohol addiction.
However, the only successfully implemented basic income scheme has shown these fears might be unfounded. In the 1980s, Alaska implemented a guaranteed income for long term residents as a way to efficiently distribute dividends from a commodity boom. A recent study of the scheme found full-time employment has not changed at all since it was introduced and the number of Alaskans working part-time has increased.
The success of this scheme has inspired other pilot projects in Kenya, Scotland, Uganda, the Netherlands, and the United States.
The rise of the robots
The growing fear that robots are going to take most of our jobs over the next few decades has added an extra urgency to the conversation around UBI. A number of leading technologists, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, have suggested some form of basic income might be necessary to alleviate the effects of unemployment caused by automation.
In his bestselling book Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford argues that a basic income is the only way to stimulate the economy in an automated world. If we don’t distribute the abundant wealth generated by machines, he says, then there will be no one to buy the goods that are being manufactured, which will ultimately lead to a crisis in the capitalist economic model.
In their book Inventing the Future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams agree that full automation will bring about a crisis in capitalism but see this as a good thing. Instead of using UBI as a way to save this economic system, the unconditional payment can be seen as a step towards implementing a socialist method of wealth distribution.
The future of work
Srnicek and Williams also claim that UBI would not only be a political and economic transformation, but a revolution of the spirit. Guaranteed payment, they say, will give the majority of humans, for the first time in history, the capacity to choose what to do with their time, to think deeply about their values, and to experiment with how to live their lives.
Bertrand Russell made a similar argument in his famous treatise on work, In Praise of Idleness. He writes that in a world where no one is compelled to work all day for wages, all will be able to think deeply about what it is they want to do with their lives and then pursue it. For many, he says, this idea is scary because we have become dependent on paid jobs to give us a sense of value and purpose.
So, while many of the debates about UBI take place between economists, it is possible that the greatest obstacle to its implementation is existential.
A basic payment might provide us with the material conditions to live comfortably, but with this comes the confounding task of re-thinking what it is that gives our lives meaning.
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