Is it rude for children to ask about inheritance?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/27/children-ask-inheritance-children

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This is a difficult time for grandparents, especially those with some money and energy left. Their children can sometimes be outrageously and ruthlessly demanding. They need babysitting and funding. Celia Imrie, horrified by the treatment of some of her retired friends by their “revolting” grown-up children, has written her first novel about such a put-upon grandmother.

Imrie is also shocked by open talk of inheritance. In her day, you barely discussed money at all, and you certainly didn’t chat about what you were going to get when your parents dropped off their perches.

I love Celia Imrie. To me she seems kind, generous, well-mannered, sensitive but robust, very funny and fairly perfect, and I don’t doubt that she’s come across some ghastly, bloodsucker children. But luckily for me, I have not. I’ve heard of a few distant ones and their desolate parents, but so far, fingers crossed, all my friends seem mad keen to look after their grandchildren, haven’t got that much money left to give away, and if they have, they usually hand it over long before they peg out.

Because times have changed. Perhaps Imrie is remembering those lovely old days when nurseries were free, families were extended, homes and childcare were affordable, jobs were plentiful and there were no tuition fees. That’s when my daughter was born, in the late 1970s. I didn’t need to ask my parents for money, I could have managed. But my dad helped me anyway, and made life much easier, and so I was very lucky indeed.

Like Imrie, I also felt that talking about money was fairly vulgar, but my family wasn’t very refined, so we talked about it anyway. But there are ways to talk about money, and my father did it rather well. “How much do you want?” he once said when I’d forgotten my purse. “Ten pounds? A hundred? A thousand? It grows on trees here in Ruislip, and I come out into the garden every morning, pick it all up and put it in a sack. Ha ha!” He liked a laugh, but I knew that he had worked like a dog all his life and would have given me anything. And there was no squabbling or discussion about inheritance. There was only me to leave it to. No siblings. I knew what I was getting. Same for my daughter.

And if she needs money, I’ll give her whatever I can, like my father did for me, and just as my friends do for their children, because what else are we to do? See our sons and daughters living in some pokehole for a squillion quid a week, pouring half their wages into rent, paying over a £100 a day for baby-minding? Why would we want to spend our money swanning around on cruises, while our children are working themselves into the ground just to keep going?

How can you avoid talking about money nowadays? Hardly anything is free.

Money is everything. It rules, and the less you have the more important it is. You have to talk about it and plan how to survive. Not many people can afford etiquette any more. And families seem more complicated. There are more divorces, break-ups, second wives and families, step-children, unmarried partners, half-siblings, rivalries, jealousies, higher costs, less state help, less housing, less job security, more stress, so that the country seem to be stuck in a giant game of musical chairs.

There’s never enough for everyone, especially the younger generation. Life seems much harder and more desperate for them than it was for us. Perhaps that’s what makes some of them so demanding. But there is no excuse for the bullying and extortion that Imrie describes. Not all of our children are hardworking and deserving. There must be some quite horrid children out there taking advantage of their knackered elderly parents and driving them into an early pauper’s grave, and Imrie is right to complain about them. I’m just keeping my rose-tinted glasses on and hoping they’re in a very small minority.

• Do you think it’s impolite for children to ask their parents about what they can expect to inherit? Or is it just prudent?