Dear LFTP: should we tell the kids they won't inherit everything?

• Should we tell our adult children they will not inherit everything?

Dear LFTP: 'Perplexed in the South' asks whether to tell their thirty- and forty-something adult children — who cannot handle money, cannot keep jobs, and have been bailed out repeatedly — that they will not inherit everything. The hosts say yes: tell them plainly, not as manipulation or a dangling incentive, but as reality, since squandering the money would set the kids up for more failure. They read the 'secular' answer (the Boy Scout motto: be prepared), and briefly question whether two children off the rails in the same way suggests the parents contributed.