WHAT is more valuable to you, is it money or family? Most of us would think, instinctively, family. But in some circumstances, people use their money to get back at people or to set people against each other.

Death is one such circumstance and in particular a will. The contents of a will can bring a family closer as they grieve or it can tear it apart, perhaps for ever. I don’t think people give enough thought to the contents of their will, if they make one at all.

I’ve just been reading news reports of a family feud between two brothers caused by the will their wealthy mother left.

One brother was a career success, the other wasn’t and relied on his mother to bail him out financially.

The report suggests that the successful brother was regarded by her as “her golden child” and confirmed it by leaving him more money, which is now being contested in the High Court. How dreadful. How awful to make public and permanent the fact that you have a favourite child.

No thought has gone into how the nonfavourite will feel knowing that their parent preferred their sibling. It would colour your view of your life up to that point and taint it from that moment on.

You would question your relationship with that parent from your first memory of them to your last and may have to undergo a complete rethink about how your parent treated you compared with a “favourite” sibling.

We are taught to respect the dead and to respect the contents of a will, but people need to earn that respect while they are still alive by making sure they leave behind a fair will, otherwise they risk lose that respect for eternity.

There has to be consideration for the consequences of the will you leave. Is it likely to stoke resentment, anger, sibling rivalry or hardship?

People need to ask themselves “could the contents of my will drive my family apart and provoke a family feud that will last a lifetime”? For the ruthless, that’s exactly what they want because they are using their will as a tool for revenge or as a way of leaving a final message.

For others, it can be inadvertent because the true consequences simply haven’t been thought through thoroughly, particularly in its interpretation for those immersed in grief, with their emotions in turmoil.

A minor family argument between parent and child could mean that a parent angrily changes a will to favour their other children and leave out the one they have argued with.

Then the argument is resolved, relationships are restored but the parent forgets to change their will again.

And when they die, perhaps years later, that child is devastated to discover their parent has left them out of their will.

That final message left by the parent to their child is completely irreversible.

The problem is that the person making the will won’t have to live with the consequences of it.

That has become far more complicated now that so many families are blended.

The possibilities of upsetting someone are endless.

Do you leave something to stepchildren as well as natural children? What about first spouses, second spouses and further spouses? What about children from a first marriage versus children from your third? What about partners, who in law do not have the same rights as spouses? Have you provided sufficiently for dependants?

Take the case of the French pop star Johnny Hallyday, who died last December. He left everything to his fourth wife. His daughter from one of his previous marriages said she was left “stupefied and hurt” that she and her half-brother had been written out of their father’s will, which is being contested.

She was left with “no material goods, no rights to his artistic work, no souvenir, no guitar.” However the case is resolved, she will never get over the feeling that her father had thought so little of her and her halfbrother that he didn’t even leave them a memento.

In the 21st century, we don’t want to think about death. We use facelifts, Botox, age-defying this, age-defying that, to put it off for as long as possible.

We are more distant from death and our own mortality than ever before.

We live for the here and now, we don’t plan for the ever after. We go to our graves kicking and screaming, and perhaps that is a reason we don’t give enough thought to how our memory might live on in our wills.

A will is a practical document that distributes your assets after your death according to your wishes. But in reality, it is so much more. It is an emotional document that distributes your true feelings about those you leave behind.