Question

I have a question specifically about the verse Proverbs 13:22, which reads a good man leaves his inheritance for his children’s children. This verse is haunting to us as we are in the middle of restructuring our living will here in Tennessee and our grown son is not wise with money and has no wherewithal or interest. Basically, we are leaving our legacy to the church. How do we grapple with this verse? Our son is not married and has no inclination toward getting married anytime soon with the way his lifestyle is. Help!

Answer

No matter your age, you need a will. Find a Christian attorney in your area and make a plan for allocating your money. In our case, we did not divide our estate evenly between our four children. We made our oldest the executor of the will, and we have a trust that will manage the allocation of funds to the younger two children. It’s wise to have a financial planner who is younger than you. Having the trust manage our two younger children allows us to avoid poor stewardship.  

This verse is a wisdom principle and we always want to submit ourselves to the corpus of God’s wisdom. Solomon is saying, ‘It’s a good blessed thing to take care of your children’s children.’ To summarize, it’s bad stewardship to give money to people that are going to be foolish with it. Solomon is not going to say It’s good for a man to leave his inheritance for foolish children. With wisdom literature, you have to be careful, because these principles are not universally applicable. It’s a witticism that Solomon’s saying, if you have good guardrails, more than likely these children are going to follow in the way. You need guardrails, and you need to teach them the truth, right from wrong, and consequences. And as they get older, God willing, they will not depart.

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