My aunt announced at dinner that she's leaving everything to my cousins' kids because "you don't have anyone to pass it down to." I'm 35 and was sitting right there.
I'm the only person in my extended family who is openly CF. Everyone knows, nobody is actively horrible about it, it just comes up occasionally in ways that make me want to leave the table. This was one of those times.
We were at a family dinner, maybe twelve people, normal Sunday thing. My aunt starts talking about updating her will because her financial advisor suggested it. Fine, not my business, except she then explains her reasoning out loud to the whole table. Her two kids both have children. I don't and won't. Therefore, she says, it makes more sense for things to go to people who have a family to pass it along to.
I am thirty five years old. I have a career, a home, things I care about, people I love. The idea that I am somehow less deserving of consideration in her will because I won't be producing grandchildren she can feel good about is, I don't know, something.
I didn't say anything in the moment because I didn't want to make it a scene and also because it's her money and she can do whatever she wants with it. That part I genuinely mean. What bothered me wasn't the decision, it was the public explanation. The casual assumption that my life is worth less inheriting because there's no next generation attached to it. Said right in front of me like I was a piece of furniture that couldn't hear.
My mom texted me later saying "she didn't mean it like that." I'm sure she didn't. It still landed exactly like that tho.