Inheritance, Entitlement, & the Road to Financial Freedom
While I was roped into Netflix this morning as we worked on the sparklers, my girlfriend and her siblings started arguing over inheritance and next of kin. It turns out, that their junior brother, their only brother, is being cited as next of kin on all her dad's documents, and properties.
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I chuckled first when I heard what they were arguing about. I thought about how weird our native people would feel about this; seeing that she's getting married into a different family. Where I come from, she clearly has nothing else to hold onto when it comes to her dad's properties unless he wants to give her some of them.
They were angry about their dad using their Junior as next of kin and wanted that to be changed. This is to accommodate the newest baby boys owned by their husbands-to-be especially since she's heavy and her sister recently put a bouncing baby boy, to birth.
Their argument boiled down to the fact that the child she's expecting who she has refused to check the sex of the baby and her sister's son should have a place in the citation so it wouldn't be their junior brother who gets everything.
It was a heated conversation that made her sister spill that the boy might grow up and claim every property aggressively and throw his mum out. That was myopic because the boy clearly loves his mum and no one can say with certainty what the boy's future looks like.
However, this conversation had me asking when it was the right time to disclose inheritances to our children. I know life is unpredictable and we never know when we will kick the bucket. But even though I did not support my girlfriend and her sister; seeing that they were feeling entitled to the money and all the things their dad worked hard for and can decide who gets what, I did see that it was rather too early to let the boy into what he is getting as soon as his dad passed away or shares inheritance.
They had the feeling that it would take a negative path whereby the boy might live looking forward to when he would get his hands on what's rightfully his while setting a lot of problems in the family.
And I felt the best approach would have been to open a trust fund for him even though I did not voice this out. This trust fund will have a predetermined time, and he will have to be of great behavior to be able to get his hands on it.
But I should add that I think I heard my friend mention that once her brother got wind of the fact that he was cited next of kin in almost all of her dad's properties, he started taking his studies seriously and doing better in school.
And when she said this, it reminded me of Fallon in the movie Dynasty. This brought me back to the two sides of the coin theory that I love talking about.
You see, his siblings might think the worst of him but the boy took Fallon's approach. Doing well in school just to impress his dad, and prove that he's worthy of the inheritance. Fallon did her best to help our dad's company grow because she was hoping to get her hands on the position of the COO. She wanted to be appointed COO when he dad was ready to appoint one.
I know ladies always have to work extra hard for positions that have men vying for as well, and this boy's story might not be exact as Fallon's since he's a man, but I admired the fact that he decided to prove himself instead of sitting still, looking pretty, and feeling entitled like the rest of his siblings.
In the end, the lesson is, that you are not entitled to anything in this life. And if there's anything that you want, you should be willing to put in the work for it.
If you are hoping to reach financial freedom, then, you must be aware of the factors that you need to embrace and remove so that your future self will be rightly taken care of.
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