ABC World News Tonight

August 7, 2005

 

Mementos Can Spark Inheritance Rancor

Unlike Money, Items with Emotional Value Often Can Be Hard to Split Up

By Gigi Stone

LAKE GEORGE, Ind., Aug. 7, 2005 – The five Gallogly siblings have been visiting their Indiana lake house since they were children, and used to fight over who would mow the lawn while the others were fishing and swimming.

Today, decades later, they are adults with their own children. And now they're grappling with a tougher issue – who's going to inherit what.

It all began when their father died. They banded together so they wouldn't have to sell the lake house and their 83-year-old mother Sally could still live there.

"One big challenge is just to remain a family, to be able to stay together" said Carolyn Gallogly, the eldest sibling. "I just see so many families start to split apart once the parents are gone."

Sentimental Items

They've started to discuss which sibling potentially will inherit items with sentimental value – including a quilt their mother made in the 1920s, a Tiffany-era lamp, their grandmother's Waterford crystal.

"Generally, the boil ups come over the dumbest little thing," said Susan Newman, a social psychologist. "Siblings who grew up together are not speaking. I mean that's how ugly it gets."

When it comes to inheritance, emotion-laden personal items are five times more likely to create family conflict than money, according to a new study by Allianz Insurance.

Half of Americans do not have wills, and economists say the baby-boom generation will soon receive the biggest transfer of wealth in history – perhaps a total of $25 trillion dollars or more.

Even when there is not much money involved, families often run into problems over inheritance. The survey finds only a third of families talk out these issues ahead of time.

"When people talk about things, there's a lot more harmony," said Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave, a research and consulting firm in San Francisco. "In not doing that, you're kind of leaving a mess or a train wreck waiting to happen."

Financial experts say conversations are especially important when the distribution of money to children is unequal.