Nigella Lawson Discusses Inheritance

I was interested to read that Nigella Lawson, not only a wealthy lady in her own right but also married to multi-millionaire Charles Saatchi, plans to leave no money to her children.

Although this story has probably been exaggerated, the subject of inheritance is always a controversial one. Everyone has very strong views on the subject (even though they might not know this until they are in the situation when they write their own Will or benefit/don’t benefit from someone else’s Will).

There seem to be two main camps. Either parents seem to want to leave as much as they possibly can to their children/grandchildren or they decide that children should not inherit and should learn the “real value of money” by earning their own.

In reality, whilst many wealthy people say that they are all for teaching their children the value of hard work and valuing the important things in life, they often struggle to do this in practice. Who do you leave your money to if not your relatives? Charities? Do you really want your children to go without? Maybe you jus want to spend the money?

Often, these sort of arguments are blown out of proportion when you are talking about people as rich as Nigella because Testators (ie the makers of the Will) leave enough money to their children to make a difference, just not enough to mean that they never have to work again.

There are no right or wrong answers - just differences of opinion. However, one thing that is worth thinking about is making sure that you actually make a Will otherwise you won’t have any choice about where your money goes, and it is likely that most of it will end up going to your children anyway!

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