Our Granddaughter Could Have Been a Millionaire. But Now She’s Making Some Life Choices We Disagree With.

Pay Dirt Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images Plus. Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Pay Dirt, My wife and I are retired, and we are about to downsize to a condo. Our home, which we have lived in since a few years into our marriage, will bring in several million dollars when all is said and done. Our daughter has a 22-year-old son, “Patrick, ” and our son has a 25-year-old daughter, “Alice.” When the grandkids were younger, our original plan was to take half the proceeds from selling our home and split it between trusts for Patrick and Alice to be turned over to them when they are 35. But now we’re debating if the entire amount should only go to Patrick. Alice has three kids by three different men and cannot make sound financial decisions to save her life. Patrick is a pre-med student and has a good head on his shoulders. Is giving all the money to Patrick the right decision given how irresponsible our granddaughter has been? —To the Reasonable Go the Riches Dear To the Reasonable Go the Riches, You can leave your money to whoever you like. You can leave it all to Patrick, or to Alice, or to their parents or an animal welfare society. What you can’t do is make an accurate prediction of how someone’s life is going to turn out based on the first two decades of their lives. Here’s something to consider: If you leave all of your money to Patrick, what will that do to his relationship with Alice or her children or your own son and daughter? My guess: the whole family will blow up, and I’m sure that isn’t your intention. Beyond that, if you exclude Alice, you also exclude her three children. One way to get around this is to focus on helping, not rewarding. Who do you really want to help? Instead of cutting out Alice, you might want to work with an estate attorney to create a trust with some stringent guardrails. Maybe Alice gets some of the money at age 35 or maybe she just gets access to a small amount each year, say 2-3 percent. If you feel the need to make those guardrails even stronger, perhaps funds can only be paid directly to a landlord, school, or into a 529 college fund. Speaking of which, you could also use some of the proceeds to fund 529 plans for Alice’s three children. When it comes to Patrick, I suggest that you create similar guardrails for his trust. If he comes out of medical school with $500,000 of debt (at the top end, but not unheard of after eight years of undergraduate and med school), the trust should let him use the money to pay off high-interest undergrad or med school loans, rather than locking it up until 35 while the interest piles up. An estate attorney may have some other ideas about how you can handle an inheritance with someone who might not treat it responsibly. But, treating your grandchildren similarly is the way you keep your family from blowing up over their inheritance. —Ilyce Classic Prudie My best friend and I are 22 years old. She just went through a really difficult breakup and has been venting to me a lot. I generally let things slide when people are venting their frustrations, but she’s saying a lot of stuff that makes me feel really uncomfortable. I’m unsure how to approach that with her while she’s still dealing with all these emotions. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Family Personal Finance Relationships