Inheritance equalisation calculator
One child got a deposit for a house. Another got a wedding. A third got nothing, and is now looking at what is left and doing sums. This works out the split that levels everybody up: the earlier gifts are added back, the whole pot is divided by share, and each person’s own gift comes off their line. It is the old hotchpot method, done properly, including the part everybody gets wrong by hand. Free, no sign-up, nothing sent anywhere.
A method, not an entitlement
This page shows what a hotchpot or advancement clause produces. Whether it applies to your estate is a separate question, and the answer differs by country and by the wording of the will. In England and Wales the statutory hotchpot rules on intestacy were abolished for deaths on or after 1 January 1996, and many places require written evidence that a gift was meant as an advance before it counts at all. Vendwright publishes spreadsheets and is not a law firm. Treat every figure here as a proposal to put in front of the executor, never as a determination of what anyone is owed.
Everything is worked out in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, saved or shared. Last updated 8 August 2026.
1. Who shares, and what they already had
One row per beneficiary. Leave every share blank for an equal split, or enter percentages if the will divides it unevenly. Gift is the money that person was given during the lifetime and that the family is bringing into account. Years ago is only used if you set an uprating rate below.
2. The estate and the method
The estate figure is what is actually left to hand out, after debts, tax, funeral costs and the specific gifts the will names.
How to split an inheritance when one child was given money early
Three steps, and the third one is where hand calculations go wrong.
1. ADD the lifetime gifts back to what is left.
Estate 240,000 + gifts 75,000 = notional pot 315,000
2. DIVIDE the notional pot by each person's share.
315,000 / 3 = 105,000 each
3. DEDUCT each person's own gift from their own line.
Deposit child: 105,000 - 60,000 = 45,000 cash
Wedding child: 105,000 - 15,000 = 90,000 cash
Neither: 105,000 - 0 = 105,000 cash
---------
240,000, which is the estateThe check at the bottom is the point. The cash paid out always adds back up to the estate, because the gifts were only ever notional: they were spent years ago and nobody is producing them again. If your version of this sum does not add back to the estate, something has gone in twice.
Everybody ends level at 105,000 counting what they already had. That is what equalisation means, and it is why the child who received nothing is not being given extra: they are being caught up.
The step people get wrong
Now change one number. Suppose the deposit child had been given 130,000 rather than 60,000. The notional pot becomes 385,000 and a third of that is 128,333, which is less than what they already had. They cannot hand 1,667 back, and under the usual rule nobody asks them to. What happens instead is that they drop out of the calculation entirely, and the pot is worked out again without them.
That second pass is the part that gets missed. With the deposit child out, the pot is the estate plus the remaining gifts, 240,000 plus 15,000, so 255,000 shared between two, which is 127,500 each. The wedding child receives 112,500 in cash and the child with nothing receives 127,500. Do it in one pass instead and you get two numbers that do not add up to the estate, which is how families end up with three different spreadsheets.
Hotchpot, advancement, and whether any of it applies to you
The method above is centuries old and has a name in most legal traditions. English law called it hotchpot. American law calls a lifetime gift treated this way an advancement. Civil law systems have their own version, sometimes compulsory and sometimes with fixed reserved shares for children that go a good deal further than anything on this page.
What differs everywhere is whether the family gets a choice.
- England and Wales. The statutory hotchpot rules that applied on intestacy were abolished for deaths on or after 1 January 1996 by the Law Reform (Succession) Act 1995. Where somebody dies without a will, lifetime gifts are generally not brought back. Where there is a will, it happens only if the will says so. See also the intestacy rules on GOV.UK.
- United States. Jurisdictions following the Uniform Probate Code treat a lifetime gift as an advancement only where the person who died declared it in a contemporaneous writing, or the person who received it acknowledged it in writing. States that have not adopted that code have their own rules, and there are fifty possible answers. Start with your state court.
- Elsewhere. Several civil law countries require gifts to descendants to be brought back as a matter of course, and some go further and allow a gift to be reduced if it cut into a child’s reserved share. If the estate is being administered outside the common law world, this is the first thing to check rather than the last.
None of that stops a family agreeing to equalise voluntarily, which is what most people who find this page are actually trying to do. Where everybody entitled agrees, there is usually a formal route to give effect to it, and the executor and a professional will know which one. What the arithmetic here gives you is the number to agree on.
A loan is not a gift
If the money was lent rather than given, it is a debt owed to the estate. It is an asset, it can usually be collected, and it comes off that beneficiary’s share in full rather than being shared out. That is a different calculation from this one and a much better outcome for everybody else, which is why it is worth establishing which it was before doing any arithmetic at all.
What each input means
- Value left to divide
- The residue: what is left after debts, funeral costs, the tax, the administration expenses and any specific legacies the will names. If the will leaves a watch to a nephew and 5,000 to a charity, those come out before this figure. Getting this wrong is the most common reason two family members produce two different splits.
- Share
- What the will or the intestacy rules give each person, as a percentage. Leave every row blank for an equal split. If you enter any share, blank rows count as zero, so fill them all in or none of them. Uneven splits are perfectly normal and the arithmetic handles them without changing.
- Gift
- The amount that person was given during the lifetime and that the family has decided to bring into account. Only the money everyone agrees was an advance on their inheritance belongs here. Ordinary birthday money, a few hundred at Christmas and normal help with living costs are not advances, and putting them in makes the exercise unwinnable.
- Years ago
- How long before now the gift was made. Only used when you set an uprating rate, and ignored entirely at zero.
- Uprate old gifts by
- An annual rate applied on a compound basis to each gift, so that a gift made further back is brought in at a larger figure. Zero, the default, is face value. There is no legally correct rate, and picking one is a family decision: some use a published inflation measure over the period, some use house price growth if the gift was a deposit, and many use nothing because it starts an argument that is bigger than the difference.
- If a gift was bigger than the share
- They keep it and take nothing more is the usual rule: an over-advanced beneficiary drops out and the rest of the estate is divided among everyone else, which is what the tool does by default. They pay the excess back in makes their line negative and raises everybody else, and it only applies where a will or an agreement genuinely requires repayment.
Worked examples
All produced by the calculator above.
Three children, two earlier gifts
The default case: 240,000 left, an equal three-way split in the will, one child given 60,000 for a deposit eight years ago and one given 15,000 towards a wedding three years ago.
| Beneficiary | Gift | Notional share | Cash now | Total received |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deposit | 60,000 | 105,000 | 45,000 | 105,000 |
| Nothing | 0 | 105,000 | 105,000 | 105,000 |
| Wedding | 15,000 | 105,000 | 90,000 | 105,000 |
| Total | 75,000 | 315,000 | 240,000 | 315,000 |
Compare that with simply dividing 240,000 by three, which gives 80,000 each. The child who had nothing is 25,000 better off under equalisation and the child who had the deposit is 35,000 worse off, and both of those numbers are exactly what the earlier gifts were worth relative to an even split. That is usually the moment the conversation becomes about facts rather than feelings.
The same estate, with the deposit uprated
Set the rate to 3% a year and the eight-year-old deposit comes in at 76,006 rather than 60,000, while the three-year-old wedding gift comes in at 16,391. The notional pot rises to 332,397, each share to 110,799, and the cash split becomes 34,793, 110,799 and 94,408. Whether that is fairer is a matter of opinion. Whether it is a big difference is not: it moves about 5,800 towards the child who received nothing.
One child had more than a share
Same estate, but the deposit was 130,000. A third of the notional 385,000 is 128,333, which is less than they already have, so they drop out and take nothing more. The pot is recalculated without them at 255,000 across two, giving 127,500 each, so the wedding child receives 112,500 and the child with nothing receives 127,500. Nobody is asked to hand anything back, and the cash still totals 240,000.
An unequal will
Shares do not have to be equal for any of this to work. A will leaving 50% to one child and 25% each to two others, on an estate of 200,000 with a single earlier gift of 40,000 to the 50% child, gives a notional pot of 240,000. The shares are 120,000, 60,000 and 60,000, so the cash is 80,000, 60,000 and 60,000. The gift comes off the person who received it, not off everybody.
The mistakes that turn this into a family argument
- Deducting the gift from the estate instead of adding it. It halves the correction and looks deliberate to whoever loses out.
- Forgetting the second pass. When somebody is over-advanced, the pot has to be worked out again without them.
- Bringing in ordinary family help. Holidays, groceries and birthday money are not advances, and counting them makes the exercise impossible.
- Using the gross estate. Debts, tax, costs and specific legacies come out first, or the shares are all too high.
- Treating a loan as a gift. A loan is an asset of the estate and is usually recovered in full, which is a different and much better outcome for everyone else.
- Uprating only the gift you dislike. Either every gift is uprated at the same rate or none of them is.
- Assuming the law requires equalisation. In many places it does not, and starting from that assumption sours the discussion immediately.
- Doing the sums privately and presenting a conclusion. Show the working. Most of the disagreement is about the method, not the money.
Questions about bringing lifetime gifts into account
How do I split an inheritance when one child was given money early?
Add the earlier gifts back to what is left, divide that larger notional pot by each person’s share, then take each person’s own gift off their line. On an estate of 240,000 split three ways where one child had 60,000 for a house deposit and another had 15,000 for a wedding, the notional pot is 315,000, each notional share is 105,000, and the cash actually paid out is 45,000, 105,000 and 90,000. Everyone ends up level at 105,000 once the earlier money is counted.
What is hotchpot?
Hotchpot is the old name for exactly that arithmetic: gifts made during someone’s lifetime are notionally brought back into the estate so the shares are worked out on the whole picture rather than on what happens to be left at the end. The same idea is called an advancement in the United States and various things elsewhere. It is a method, and whether it applies to a particular estate is a separate question that depends on the will and on the law where the estate is being administered.
Does the law require lifetime gifts to be brought into account?
Often not, and it varies. In England and Wales the statutory hotchpot rules on intestacy were abolished for deaths on or after 1 January 1996 by the Law Reform (Succession) Act 1995, so unless a will says otherwise, lifetime gifts are generally not brought back there. Many United States jurisdictions following the Uniform Probate Code treat a gift as an advancement only where there is a contemporaneous writing by the person who died or a written acknowledgement by the person who received it. Other countries take the opposite approach and require it. Ask the solicitor or attorney handling the estate which rule applies before relying on any figure from this page.
What if the gift was bigger than their share? Do they have to pay it back?
Under the usual rule, no. Somebody who has already received more than their share keeps what they were given and simply takes nothing further, and the rest of the estate is then divided among everybody else. The tool does this by default, and it recalculates the pot with the over-advanced person removed, which is the step people most often get wrong by hand. If your will or your family agreement genuinely requires the excess to be repaid, switch the setting and the tool shows a negative figure for that person instead.
Should an old gift be adjusted for inflation?
It is a fair question and rarely a legal requirement. A deposit of 30,000 given in 2008 bought considerably more than 30,000 buys now, so bringing it back at face value flatters the person who received it. Against that, uprating is a judgement call and every rate you pick is arguable. The tool leaves the rate at zero, which means face value, and lets you enter your own rate and the year of each gift if the family agrees to uprate. It does not pick a rate for you, because there is no correct one.
Does a loan count the same as a gift?
No, and the difference matters. An unpaid loan is a debt owed to the estate: it is an asset of the estate, it is usually collectable, and it is normally deducted from that beneficiary’s share in full rather than shared out. A gift is not owed back at all. Written evidence of which one it was, at the time it happened, is worth more than any argument afterwards. If you are not sure which you are dealing with, that is the question to settle first, because it changes the arithmetic entirely.
What about money given to a grandchild or to a child’s spouse?
It depends on who was really being benefited, and it is one of the most contested points in this area. Money paid to a grandchild’s school or to a child’s partner is often treated by the family as a gift to that child, and just as often argued the other way. The tool takes whatever figure you decide to bring in against each person and does not have a view. Write down the reasoning next to the number, because someone will ask in six months.
Does this affect inheritance or estate tax?
Separately, and it is a different calculation with different rules. Several countries look back over gifts made in the years before a death for tax purposes, on their own timetable and with their own limits, and that has nothing to do with whether the family chooses to equalise. Nothing on this page is a tax calculation, and the estate figure you enter should already be net of the tax and the debts. Get the tax position from an adviser where the estate is being administered.
What if the will says nothing about the earlier gifts?
Then the default position of your jurisdiction applies, which in many places is that the gifts are ignored and the residue is simply divided as the will says. Families frequently agree to equalise anyway, and a deed of variation or a written family agreement is the usual way to do it. That is a conversation with the executor and a professional, not something this page can settle. What the page can do is show everyone the same numbers, which is often where the conversation stalls.
Is anything I type here saved or uploaded?
No. The whole calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged, there is no account and no email address is asked for. Close the tab and the figures are gone, so print the page if you want to keep the split.
Two related tools: the probate checker works out whether a grant is needed before anything can be paid out at all, and the sibling buyout calculator handles the case where the estate is mostly a house and one of you wants to keep it.
When the split has to be recorded, not just agreed
This page produces one split and forgets it when you close the tab, which is deliberate and stays free. What it cannot do is prove later what each person actually received. The Estate Executor Organizer (€12, one .xlsx for Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice, no macros) has a distributions tab that keeps specific gifts and residue percentages apart and shows every beneficiary entitled, received and remaining, alongside an estate ledger with a running balance and missing-receipt flags. That is the table an executor hands over at the end. One payment, no subscription, no account.
See the Estate Executor Organizer