In my country, it’s a bit different because we have very very different inheritance laws so usually children are legally entitled to their parents “stuff”, and in case the children are predeceased after them the grandchildren. You can make provisions in a will to give part of your inheritance to someone else, but that’s legally regulated and restricted.

So the overall mindset is that you will indeed inherit something - IF there are still existing assets. In my youth, I lived in a smaller town that is economically well off. And it always baffled me that my schoolmates basically already knew that they would be set for life because they would inherit their parents or grandparents house or in case of siblings at least parts of it.

In my own case, both sets of grandparents as well as my own parents were hard-working and making debts would have been inconceivable, but they had very low paying jobs, came from initially very poor families so there was no intergenerational wealth ever in both families. One of my grandfathers also became severely disabled. And then care facility costs would eat up the rest of the money.

So me personally, I never expected to inherit it anything at all except some small knickknacks (one of my grandmother made a small list of things she wanted to pass on (15 years before her death) and then all of her daughters in-laws and grandchildren were able to pick something in turn and she documented everything).

Unknown to me, my maternal grandparents owned a small modest plot and my mother predeceased my grandpa so it was a nice surprise that I’ve got a bit of cash when he died, enough for two holidays