PenPenWrites

When it comes to where and when we help our children financially, pater familias and I have taken a Marxist tack: To each according to their needs. It’s never overt. An offer of a helping hand here, a fiscal boost there. We’ve never totaled up who’s gotten what or whether the "books" are even. But a recent A to a Q in the Ethicist [NYTimes, 11/11, 2nd question] got me thinking about whether we should.

The writer of the Q earned a comfortable living; his sister, off doing good works in Central America, did not. The parents helped her out financially. Shouldn’t there be a reckoning, he asked, so that the aid she had already received be subtracted from her share of the final bequest? "The allocation of money in a will," Randy Cohen warned,"can seem symbolic of the deeper feelings parents have for their children." Some families are able to "discuss these matters openly," but that isn’t necessarily you, me or even possibly The Ethicist himself. Most of us, he suggested, prefer to avoid the discord and discomfort such discussions spew. (His final word on the subject: we parents should live it up and spend it all before we go!]

Well, maybe not. But I’m girding myself up to at least let the kids know what our "allow and bequeath" philosophy is–to the extent we have one.