Grandma left my children a fortune – but how do I stop them blowing it all before they’re 25?

My grandmother died two months ago at the age of 93. She was always organized and determined to get things right. More than a decade ago – shortly after her husband’s death – she sat down with a lawyer and wrote a will.

Her money was hard-earned, so it was important to her that she had a plan. My grandmother was born in 1930 and as a girl she watched her father work to slowly build a chain of electronics stores. When she married, her husband built them a house and joined the family business, striving to create a comfortable life for them both.

My grandmother’s will was simple. She left a few small financial gifts and the remainder of her estate was divided equally between her eleven grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I can understand the logic. By skipping her children, Grandma hoped her money would help her family without creating estate tax problems for her children, who have since built up some wealth of their own. She also hoped to help all her younger descendants get a good education, which was extremely important to her.

In the 1950s, her grandparents offered to pay for her son, my uncle, to attend private school. Grandma was happy for her son, but unhappy that her daughter was disadvantaged as a result. So she and my grandfather scrimped and saved so that my mother could also go to private school.

Grandma was always convinced that the money should be distributed fairly. While cleaning out her house, I found a notebook in which she meticulously wrote down who got what for Christmas each year and how much it cost. In one case, more than thirty years ago, she bought my cousin’s gift – socks – at a discount, so he could get the £2 she had saved in cash to keep things fair.

However, Grandma’s determination to be fair in distributing her estate created another problem. Leaving money to her great-grandchildren, she made a will with seven minors as beneficiaries. At first I didn’t see a problem. After all, it would be a wonderful stepping stone for my young children to receive a few thousand pounds.

But then the lawyers appraised her estate. Grandma had not ended up in a nursing home as she had expected. She lived independently and frugally until the end. The result was that there was more to pass on than she probably expected.

Once the calculations were done, we realized that each beneficiary would receive a high five-figure sum. I talked to my sister and cousins ​​and we all agreed that we didn’t want small children – including my two toddlers – to receive such large amounts of money.

The money remains invested until they turn 18. But with years of investment growth, they could inherit close to a six-figure sum.

Like many young adults, I wasn’t the wisest of souls when I was 18. While I may not have blown the money on wild nights out or a Ferrari, I certainly would have blown it quickly on shopping, traveling and probably a pretty crazy car.

First we tried to change the will using a so-called deed of variation. This is a document that allows a beneficiary in a will to change what he or she receives. They are often used when someone wants to pass their gift on to someone else – usually for inheritance tax purposes – or if a child or grandchild is born after the will is made and needs to be included. We thought that as legal guardians we could use a deed of variation to put a limit on how much money the great-grandchildren would receive.

We were wrong. ‘If you want to try to change the will by a deed of variation, you cannot do so without the permission of the Court of Protection, if there are fewer beneficiaries, because they do not have the legal authority to make decisions on the variation or all the documents sign,” said Julia Peake, tax, trusts and estate planning technical specialist at Canada Life.

In fact we cannot change the will without going to court and paying around £1,000 in legal bills.

We then tried to put the money away until the great-grandchildren reached an age where the money would, hopefully, be used wisely. We agreed that 25 seemed sensible. However, our lawyer told us that even as legal guardians of the beneficiaries, there is nothing we can do to increase the age at which they receive the money. I believe that if my grandmother’s attorney had warned her about how much her great-grandchildren would receive, and at such a young age, she would have avoided this situation.

‘I encourage will makers to leave gifts with a minimum age of 25 to be entitled to them, but with a ‘progressive power’ included in the will so that the executors of the will can access capital or income at their discretion before that age can advance,” says Gary Rycroft , a partner at Joseph A Jones & Co Solicitors LLP. ‘So a trust is created for up to 25 years.’

Instead, my cousins ​​and I wonder how we can prepare our children to be wise when they receive this money. Do we tell them, and risk it hindering their ambition to make a living for themselves when they know payday is coming? Or should it be an 18th birthday surprise?

A trust expert I spoke to saw a case where a father simply did not tell his child about an inheritance and hid all letters referring to it when they turned 18. His plan was to keep it a secret until he felt they were old enough to do it. handling money responsibly. It didn’t work: once his child came of age, they had to sign forms regarding the trust, so he had to come clean.

The lesson we can all learn from my grandmother’s will?

I would familiarize you with common errors in wills before meeting with an attorney. Consider who you want to inherit your estate, at what age and who will manage the money in the years to come. And get good legal advice.