Divorcing Adult Children: Can You Do It Legally?
No parent wants to have a strenuous relationship with their child. Ideally, families strive for healthy connections, maintaining communication and closeness as children grow into adults and begin their own path in life. However, this is not always a reality, and every parent-child relationship unfolds differently. Relationships between parents and their adult children can sometimes become strained and unhealthy, leading to difficult decisions that are made by either parents or adult children.
In certain situations, parents may feel compelled to distance themselves from their adult children, or even break contact completely, leaving them to wonder if it’s even possible to “divorce” adult children. This difficult choice is often accompanied by a mix of emotions, as it is typically the last thing parents want to do but feel they must.
Is It Possible to Divorce Adult Children?
Legally speaking, it’s not possible to divorce adult children, as divorce refers to ending and effectively dissolving a marriage. However, the term is often used to describe the act of disowning or excluding children from a parent’s life. This may mean preventing the child from having any inheritance or rights to an estate after the parent’s death.
While parents are legally obligated to care for and support their minor children, this obligation ends when the child turns 18. After children reach the age of majority, parents are not required to provide financial support or maintain any specific relationship with their adult children, even though many do, regardless of whether it is healthy or not.
If a relationship becomes strained or if a situation leads to a complete breakdown of contact, parents might choose to “divorce” their adult children, otherwise known as disown their children, by taking various actions, including cutting off all contact. These actions symbolize a final severance of the parental relationship with their children, reflecting the depth of the estrangement.
Is Disowning a Legal Process?
Choosing to disown an adult child by cutting off communication or stopping financial assistance is not typically a formal legal process. However, if you wish to make sure that they do not inherit anything from your estate after your passing, you may need to look at the legal process of disinheriting them. A divorce lawyer can assist parents with this by drafting a will with specific language that clearly states your intentions to not provide any rights to the disowned child.
How to Disinherit an Adult Child
Since children are generally considered to be heirs to their parents’ assets, including finances, debts, and estates, disinheriting a child requires precise and unquestionable wording in a will. A divorce lawyer can help you include the necessary provisions in your will to exclude the child, and if desired, their descendants as well.
To strengthen your decision to effectively disinherit an adult child when parents choose to divorce adult children, it is recommended to:
- Document your reasons for disinheriting your adult child, including any scenarios or communication that caused the decision to be made.
- Make sure to document your mental clarity at the time of signing.
- Avoid citing reasons that may no longer be relevant.
- Consider leaving a small bequest to avoid claims of being forgotten.
- Include a no-contest clause to prevent any future legal challenges to the will.
How Do I Go No Contact with My Adult Child?
When parents decide to “divorce” or effectively disown their adult children, they often also wish to have no contact with them as well. There are two primary ways to accomplish this; however, if you wish to legally prevent them from contacting you, it typically requires abuse to be proven, whether it is in the form of mental or physical abuse or threats of abuse.
For those who are not facing threats of physical or mental abuse but wish to divorce their adult children and go no contact, an informal approach may be sufficient. If you are living with the child you want to disown, you can move to a new residence without them and choose not to provide them with your address.
In order to go no contact, you can sever the relationship by ceasing all contact, which will include refusing to accept written or electronic communications. It is also advisable to notify the child in writing that you are severing the connection and no longer wish to have any contact with them. Sending this notification via certified mail can provide proof of your intentions to no longer be in contact with your adult child.
In situations where there is harassment or abuse present, including threats of harm, a more formal legal approach is necessary to go no contact. You can legally terminate the relationship and go no contact by notifying the relative in writing of your decision to sever family ties and by also seeking a restraining order to limit their access to you.
Additionally, you may also be able to obtain a Notice of No Trespass from a city or county official, which will effectively restrain them from being able to step on your property. If violated, the adult child could face criminal charges. If you need any help doing either of these things, a divorce lawyer can help. Legal actions like these help to protect your safety and reinforce your decision to go no contact with your child, as well as prevent any further abuse or harm.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What would make you want to divorce your adult children? Would you disinherit them?
Tags Estrangement
This is great information. There’s so much guilt and shame around having to save yourself by letting go of a child, even just temporarily. Others’ judgements only compound the pain of this brutal decision.
My 40-year-old honour role, valedictorian, paid-her-way-through-law-school attorney daughter has been abusive to her siblings, her father and me for the past 20 years. She used to have tons of friends and has lost them all over the years. She’s an informally diagnosed narcissist, just as my mother was. The other two kids are loving, kind and awesome to be with. (They were all three raised the same way.)
I tried everything to keep the relationship but she has no ability to empathize and lashes out often so it’s been 20 years of walking on eggshells. Her dad and I were the last to hang on but I told her in a simple text that I “can’t be in communication with you right now”. Typing that broke my heart and I struggled for weeks after.
Now healed, I realize I should have done this a long time ago as her behaviour caused me chronic anxiety and depression for years. I finally feel free, having let go of an extremely heavy burden that wasn’t my responsibility to carry.
NO mother does this unless they absolutely must and all deserve support, respect, and understanding.
The parents’ funds are for their own retirement and long term health care. If anything is left after that, the parents may also wish to support a charity or an institution that is meaningful to them, especially if the relationship with the children no longer exists. If adult children unreasonably cut off contact, then they have made their stand and should not expect an inheritance.
I have only one thing to say. MENTAL HEALTH. If mental health is good then relationships are good. If mental health is not good then nasty challenges creep into your life that you would have never imagined could ever exist. No one can predict the mental health your precious child will have as an adult therefore as much as we all want the best loving relationship possible sometimes we have no control over their behaviours, thoughts or actions. But you may begin to realize you do have control over yours and you may begin to realize you have to protect yourself somehow, for whatever reason. No one has the right to criticize or judge. And if they do judge than pray that they never experience the heartbreak so many other parents have felt. Never feel guilty for doing what is right to be safe or feel okay in your own existence.
My father was not a very nice man and I only found out that he, not only cut me out of his will, didn’t acknowledge his grandchildren and denying his grandchildrens exsistence cut like a knife and in all honesty for a long time lived in the hope he wasn’t my father he was a nasty husband, he put my beautiful mother in hospital, a nasty son, he tried to strangle his own father
I’ve always said if you want to upset me just say “your just like your father” (I am not I’m nothing like him thankfully) but do be prepared to run
My daughter after my husband died, wanted to have a meeting with me and her husband to discuss ” my behaviors ” I refused that meeting. She chose to have no communication with me and her sister. When the will was redone she was not included in the will. Any communication is done via our lawyer. We share the same birthday. She has missed so much. It was her decision. Does it hurt, very much so. But she made that decision. My life is good with my other daughter and granddaughter and husband