CNN has this story today: Money disputes hurt families.

Most of the article focuses on married couple finances, but there is also a situation involving father-son inheritance finances.

Over the years, my husband and I have taken the approach with our relatives’ money that “it’s their money, not ours.” If and when they wish to distribute something from an estate, it’s their decision to make.

Yes, we did get money from the in-laws toward the down payment for our house. But that was an arrangement known many years prior, and had already been done for my sister-in-law.

Given our ages (I’m 40, my husband is 47), we’ve also received money from the estates of our grandparents and an elderly aunt. It wasn’t a lot of money – not much more than a tax refund in each case.

But we knew we got that money from a generation that survived the Great Depression and World War II. They had to get along with very little for a very long time.

We were very appreciative of what they were able to share with their families after they had taken care of themselves in their old age. We were lucky to get any money at all when so many other relatives were still alive.

We also were very careful as to what we did with the inheritance checks.

Much of that money we got in recent years was invested into our house or furnishing our house. The first such check went to buy our first home computer in 1996.