When parents play financial favourites: How to avoid resentment between siblings

Money moves through families like an undercurrent, carrying weight far beyond its numerical value. When parents give more to one child than another—a down payment here, a subsidy there, a loan refused at a crucial moment—the mathematics of it matters far less than what the imbalance seems to say about love, worth, and who belongs.

John, 47, has spent decades feeling the weight of that message. His parents supported his younger brother consistently: they helped with a house deposit, covered living expenses, treated him as someone who needed scaffolding to stand. John, by contrast, was cast as the capable one, the academic, the one expected to manage alone. When he asked for £10,000 toward a house deposit after a relationship ended—money his parents could easily afford—they refused. The refusal landed differently because of everything that came before it. He describes the pattern as having taught him that his own needs don't matter, that other people's requirements always come first. The resentment has rippled outward, affecting how he relates to friends and partners, how he moves through the world.

He is not alone in this experience. Online forums overflow with similar stories: siblings tallying up who received what, when, and why. The disputes surface around inheritance divisions, the cumulative weight of lifetime support, questions about who sacrificed more for aging parents. On the surface these are arguments about money. Underneath, they are arguments about recognition, about whether a parent's choices signal preference or merely practical necessity.

Dr. Fenia Christodoulidi, a counselor at Relate, explains that financial support from parents carries symbolic weight that money alone cannot account for. When one child receives more than another, siblings often interpret the difference as a statement about love, about whose struggles matter more, about who the parent values. Even when parents have legitimate reasons for unequal support—one child earns significantly less, another faces illness, housing costs have risen—failing to articulate those reasons clearly leaves space for hurt to grow. The silence becomes its own message.

Some families navigate this terrain without incident. Ellis, who works in finance in London, says her siblings have received different levels of support at different times, and it has never created friction. Her colleague Tasha, the youngest of seven, has watched her siblings quarrel over perceived favouritism even though she believes her parents treat them equally. She attributes the conflict to normal human uncertainty and jealousy, something that surfaces, gets processed, and eventually resolves when people talk it through. But Tasha's experience is not universal. For John, talking about money has always been forbidden in his family. When he has tried to express his feelings, his parents become evasive. He has stopped trying.

Claire Webb, a solicitor and mediator who works with families in dispute, sees the consequences regularly. A parent might promise one child that an earlier gift—money for a house, say—will be deducted from their inheritance. Then the will arrives and says everything should be divided equally. Years of feeling shortchanged suddenly have legal weight. The unfairness that was never addressed becomes the reason siblings stop speaking.

The path forward requires clarity while parents are still alive. Parents need to explain not just what they are doing but why: this child earns less, that child faces different circumstances, these are the practical reasons behind the choices. They need to be explicit about how those choices will affect inheritance, or whether they will affect it at all. When that conversation does not happen, mediation can help—a trained professional who can help siblings understand what actually started the conflict and find their way back to the family bond that usually still exists underneath. Legal action is rarely the endpoint; most siblings who pursue it eventually reach an agreement. But the damage to relationships, the years of silence, the feeling of being undervalued—those costs accumulate long before lawyers become involved.

John has made peace with the possibility that he will receive nothing from his parents' estate. What troubles him more is the expectation that he will be called upon to care for them if they become ill, to step in financially or practically, despite having been told his whole life that he should manage alone. The imbalance, once established, becomes the template for everything that follows.