**Advancement** (noun) — A gift given during someone's lifetime that is intended to be an early distribution of what the recipient would inherit after death, reducing their share of the estate accordingly.
An advancement is when someone gives you a significant gift while they're alive, with the understanding that it's coming out of what you'd eventually inherit. It's like getting part of your inheritance early.
The classic example is a parent giving one child money to buy a house, while planning to leave their other children equivalent amounts in their will. The house money is an advancement—it's not a bonus on top of inheritance, it's part of it.
For an advancement to count, there usually needs to be clear intent that the gift should reduce the future inheritance. A birthday present isn't an advancement. Paying for someone's wedding might or might not be, depending on what was understood at the time.
⏱ When you'll encounter this term
Advancements become relevant when someone dies and the estate is being divided up. If one child received a $100,000 advancement for a house deposit, and the parent's will says to divide everything equally between three children, that $100,000 gets added back into the calculations. Otherwise, the child who received the advancement would get more than their fair share.
Many jurisdictions require advancements to be documented in writing to count. A verbal understanding might not be enough. Without documentation, family members often disagree about whether a gift was meant to be an advancement or just a gift.
You'll encounter this term when executors are calculating how to divide an estate fairly, especially when there have been large gifts to some beneficiaries but not others. It's meant to prevent inequality, but can cause conflict if expectations weren't clearly communicated.
**Related terms:** [Gift](/dictionary/gift), [Intestate Succession](/dictionary/intestate-succession), [Distribution](/dictionary/distribution)
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"Mum gave me $80,000 for a house deposit ten years ago. When she died, the executor counted that as an advancement and reduced my inheritance accordingly so my siblings got the same total value."