Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Willing Land to Children.

A friend told my father, my father left 240 acres to me.

I should leave all my children 240 acres.

What do you think/, not so easy.

Those who work the land, get the land. Those who dont, dont

Good to see you post Ben.

My dad and his two brothers were each willed two quarters (320 acres). That was about 1950. Dad grew that to nine quarters. Dad is gone now, but he and mom have it in a trust. Us seven kids, including me will be the recipients of that trust, when mom is gone.
Also, one of dads brothers never came back to the farm after military service. Dad leased and farmed his land, and my brother still does. Dads youngest brother was very short on ambition, and ended up having to sell his two quarters. Mom bought one and one of my brothers bought the other.
I don’t think you owe your kids 240 acres each. Absent any major behavioral issues, I’d split up what ever I had evenly amongst my kids. Actually wife and I have a trust that treats our two kids equally.

Lots more important things to leave kids than land. To measure inheritance in acres seems peculiar.

Someone once told me that with kids equal isn’t fair, and fair isn’t equal.

My grandfather was willed 140 acres from his father, and the plan was to will it to my father, but he passed away while my grandparents were still living. So, they willed it to myself and my 3 brothers. One brother got into financial problems, and we bought his part. It is in my will that my son will get my portion of that farm. I also own other land, and my son will inherit that. My grandchildren are the seventh generation to live on this land, and it is my hope that they will carry on the tradition of living on and taking care of the land.

Settle it all before you die.Then stipulate in the will that all the land must stay in the family.Those that don't want to farm can either go shares and lease to other family members or all the other family members can chip in and divy up between then.Busting up a farm, no none wins except some dveloper

"I'm not greedy; I only want the land next to mine."

Biggest long running lawsuit I ever saw was over this.

Guy left the ranch to 3 sisters. Never to be sold or divided, and they were to ranch it together.

It lasted about 6 months until the fight started.

Took 16 years and all 3 sides could have bought a ranch the size of the original ranch on what they spent on lawyers.

Wonder there wasn't a killing over it all. Came close a few times.

You don't put all the names on one title.Especially 3 women. You divide it equally, but with restrictions noted. Also when member dies,the other family members inherit it equally divided. Another option would be to put it in a conservation easement with the same stipulations and the divided family would still own it with 3 separate titles and 3 separate easements.
Another thing,you divide the land before you die and stipulate who gets what portion. .You don't let heirs decide how it is divided and what heir gets what portion .Fights ensue over who got the best piece and how it is divided if you let the heirs decide it.

Yeah, as a surveyor, I saw lots of fights over undivided interest.

Nothing reverts adults to children quicker.

Contractor I use at work has been buying farm after farm (maybe we pay him too much?). He has two daughters, one lives across the road, her husband is my buddies farm hand and is buying his own farms. The other daughter knew more than dad, moved away, divorced, remarried. Blah blah blah. He says his will is set up so that each daughter gets half the property, but stipulation is if either of them wants to sell any of it they must offer the other sister the property at 1/2 if current market value. He said he didn’t work his butt off building a farm for a daughter to go and cash it in to take vacations on. The one daughter isn’t going anywhere, kinda obvious who it was aimed at.

I’m just mad at him for never divulging what his daughters looked like until after they got married...

When years of your blood and sweat is in that land and you know it better than the back of your hand, it can be as sentimental as any heirloom.

As pa said:
Stuff is made every day in factories, the earth isn't getting bigger.

I understand that land can get under someone's skin and feel like it's important. It was to my dad. Projecting (might even say burdening) that emotion onto your kids doesn't do them any favors. Let the kids find their own way in life. teach them values and how to work. If they value that particular piece of dirt like you do, hurray!

I've just seen too many young men taking on a piece of dirt more out of a sense of obligation trying to please dad or meeting family expectations. If their heart (and soul) isn't in it, it'll just cost them years of their life they could have spent pursuing their true calling in life.

In my family, my Dad offered me the farm, and I, less gracefully than I should have, declined. I'm still farming, just 6,000 miles away and a different crop, happy as a pig in slop. My brother got talked into taking it over, and it cost him 10 years of his life, his relationship with his father, and it contributed to his divorce. It left a permanent mark, and could have been avoided by just selling the place and letting the kids have what's left of the money when they passed.

What I see on the outskirts of Colorado Springs is kids inheriting the land and growing houses on it. About 5 miles south of me there is a couple thousand acre tract that they ran 100-150 cow pairs on it this past year.Now earth movers are chewing it up with a projected 3000-5000 houses going up on it.Three mile south, same thing happened in the last three years, including government subsidized low cost apartment. 2 miles west ditto. It is supposedly going to be the center of population in 5-6years.
Let the old folks sell the land, go live in a retirement home along some beach some where and spend that themselves

Wife and I only have 281 acres of Ozark hunting land. Two kids.

Still trying to figure out how exactly to handle this...but one thing I am fairly certain of. I will attach no strings regarding what they do with the land. Once we are gone and it is theirs - it is theirs. I am not going to try to control the affairs on earth from my grave.

I raised them to think. At some point we have to expect them to execute!

Wife's family farm is supposed to be willed to her and her 2 brothers. It will be interesting to see how that all transpires. Although we don't necessarily want to live there, I would be tempted to purchase the brothers in law interest and keep the land as a long-term investment and see if either of our kids would be interested in 15-20 years.

I am hoping my FiL sets it up right so as to minimize issues when the time comes. I too have seen tons of family fights over these issues. Don't really want to go through this ourselves.

He needs to divide the place and leave the divided parts to them.

Undivided interest leads to nothing but bitterness and lawsuits.

For a bunch of wise men, I have never read so much piss poor advice, let the man that paid for it choose what happens to it, if it was a gift, then make it a gift, if you busted your ass buying it, then do what the hell ever you want, no one knows your kids better than the one who raised them, as for what's "fair" get over it, life ain't "fair" , some will be happy others will piss on your grave , so be it. You will dead, so the bitchen will fall on deaf ears, and as the ole saying goes, free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it !

I think that land is expensive and not all land is created equal, some land being more productive and easier to farm than other.

I think that leaving your kids land is a great thing to do and I think that you should include them in the decision of how inherited land will to allocated. If you are all sitting around a table and agree of the distribution, nobody has any reason to complain later on. My in-laws left instructions for my Wife and her Brother to divide the land equally based on the value of the land, not the number of acres. It took them 18 months to come to an agreement about who would get which farms and it wasn't a pleasant time for anyone involved.

One thing that my in-laws did that I think is a good idea is if either my Wife or her Brother want to sell any of the land that they inherited, they are required by the terms of the will to give the other sibling the option to match any offer and keep the land in the family. When we sold 67 acres awhile back, my BIL declined to exercise his option to buy it and it went back to the family who owned it before they sold it to my FIL back in the mid-1960's.