There’s a conversation most families are quietly not having. It involves two of our favourite taboos at once, money and death, which makes it roughly as popular as a group project on a long weekend.
So we put it off. And then one day it’s being had anyway, in a hospital corridor or a lawyer’s office, by people who are grieving and guessing at the same time.
Why do families dodge the inheritance talk?
Because from the kids’ side it feels grabby (“so… about the house”), and from the parents’ side it feels morbid. Everyone’s protecting everyone else from a conversation that would actually protect them all.
Here’s the reframe: the inheritance talk isn’t about assets. It’s about wishes. Asking what someone wants is not the same as asking what you’ll get, and done early, it’s one of the most loving and practical things a family can do.
The best time for the inheritance talk is when nobody needs to have it.
We never had the end-of-life conversation with Dad. Would he have wanted full-time care? What kind of funeral did he want? We could only guess from his personality, because we’d never actually asked. I’d trade a lot for a tool that had made that moment easy.Ness, founder of Good Chat
How do you open it without making it weird?
- Lead with their wishes. “I want to make sure we’d actually honour what you want, can we talk about it while everything’s calm?” Respect first, logistics later.
- Make it about peace of mind, not numbers. Start with values: what matters to them, what they’d want remembered, who they’d want looked after. The spreadsheet stuff follows naturally.
- Go in turns. Share your own thinking about the future too. A conversation where only one person is mortal is not a conversation.
Can we talk about it while it’s calm and not urgent?
What does it look like when it goes well?
A normal Sunday lunch, not a hospital waiting room. You ask your parents what matters to them for the future. It’s stiff for about thirty seconds, then it isn’t. You learn things you’d never have known. Someone probably cries a little, someone definitely laughs, and everyone breathes easier on the drive home.
That’s the whole trick: have it early, have it warm, and it becomes a conversation about love wearing sensible admin clothing.
Used this with my parents who are in their 70s. It opened up conversations about end of life planning that we had all been avoiding. We all feel better for having had them.Fiona, in a five-star review of the Death deck
Your family is not too awkward for this conversation. They’re just waiting for someone to go first. Might as well be you.
