Having no family to speak of, an inheritance is not something I've ever even considered. I believe that if I did have parents alive with whom I had a relationship, I'd rather have them than any funds. Though I do wish there were some family heirlooms, family traditions, stories and such to hand down. That's really the loss in the mess that was my family.
Slingshot, your situation sounds like my former MIL. She was married to a man who had four kids from a previous marriage. He was a really good man, WWII vet, business owner, and just an all-around decent human being, the kind you took pleasure in knowing. He and I used to have lunch together every couple months and lament the fact that we both married into the nuthouse that was that family. Our final lunch was three weeks before the car accident that killed him, and we spent about four hours that day talking about his four kids. He'd been estranged from them for a few years (few being 4-6), largely due to the fact that she was such a bitch to them. He planned to mend the gap, revise his will, and put his family back in order, come hell or high water. He never got the chance. The car accident (he was driving) killed him instantly, put MIL in the hospital for a month. I contacted his kids and told them what happened, arranged his cremation and memorial service, and picked up a bottle of Johnny Walker Black on the way to his oldest son's house after the service. We put the bottle in the middle of the table and drank it in Clay's honor while I told the four of them, their spouses, and a few nearly adult grandkids about the conversation I'd had with him three weeks earlier. It was the only inheritance they had because the bitch kept everything. And everything amounted to several million. Her son, who I was divorcing in the middle of all this, said, "I don't know why you're so upset about this. If you stay with me, some of those millions will be yours one day." She didn't give one slim dime to his kids or grandkids. I wonder sometimes if alienating his kids wasn't her grand plan all along. Just disgusting.