Sticking to her guns. Marie Osmond is a proud mother (and grandmother) of eight, but she remains firm in her plans not to leave her children an inheritance.
“Honestly, why would you enable your child to not try to be something? I don’t know anybody who becomes anything if they’re just handed money,” Osmond, 63, exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, January 10, while promoting her Nutrisystem partnership. “To me, the greatest gift you can give your child is a passion to search out who they are inside and to work. I mean, I’ve done so many things from designing dolls [and much more]. I love trying [and] I wanna try everything. I’m a finisher.”
She continued: “That’s one of my rules with my kids. If you start it, you finish it, you don’t ever have to do it again, but you gotta finish. And, I just think all [an inheritance] does is breed laziness and entitlement. I worked hard and I’m gonna spend it all and have fun with my husband [Steve Craig, whom I remarried in 2011].”
Marie Osmond Courtesy of Nutrisystem
The Donnie and Marie alum made headlines in February 2020 when she revealed that she had no plans to leave her fortune to her children.
“I think you do a great disservice to your children to just hand them a fortune because you take away the one most important gift you can give your children, and that’s the ability to work,” Osmond said during an episode of The Talk at the time. “You see it a lot in rich families where the kids, they don’t know what to do and so they get in trouble. Let them be proud of what they make. I’m going to give mine to my charity.”
The “Paper Roses” songstress shares son Stephen, 39, with her husband, 65, as well as children Rachael, 31, Jessica, 35, Brandon, 26, Brianna, 24, Matthew, 23, and Abigail, 18, with ex-husband Brian Blosil. Osmond and Blosil’s eldest son, Michael, died by suicide at the age of 18 in February 2010.
After the Grammy Award nominee revealed her inheritance plans, Stephen’s friend even called him and said, “Man, it must suck to be you.”
“I don’t not help my children. I mean, [if] they need help [buying] a car or something, [I will pitch in,]” Osmond said on Tuesday. “I love them to learn. You don’t love something if you don’t earn it. And so, even when they get their first car, you pay for half of it, get a job and learn that self-worth that [it] gives you.”
While the Dancing With the Stars alum — who plans to leave a bulk of her fortune “to help people” — has taught her kids to find success on their own, she does enjoy spoiling her eight grandchildren.
“I just feel like this is the best time of our lives as women. Now I’m a grandma and I get to just spoil my grandkids,” she gushed to Us. “I don’t have to raise them. Good luck. It’s fun. … I feel like I have the best life.”
The Utah native also cited her Nutrisystem partnership and weight loss journey as the reason she’s been able to keep up with the little ones’ energy.
“I’m a fun grandma because, you know, I just posted a picture of a quilt I made and one of the comments was, ‘I can’t even sit on the floor like that.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, you can. Don’t give up. You are in there,’” she explained. “I had all those excuses. ‘Oh, my bones are bigger. Oh, my body’s different.’ Your body’s in there. You just have to love it again and take care of yourself. And it’s really doable. It’s, like, if I can motivate one person to find that health in their life, it’s totally worth everything that I do with Nutrisystem. It’s a game-changer.”
With reporting by Mandie DeCamp