Inheritance of medals

The important thing is to keep any medals and paperwork relating to them together. Also if you have a photograph of the recipient, especially in uniform, this is beneficial to authenticate their provenance.
I also had a cane left to me, I think it's called a swagger stick? And a documents file like a little briefcase.

I have my father's medals mainly because my brother opted out of dealing with anything after dad died. They will go to my son as he was in the military himself. As I have a son and a daughter I tend to think that he will get anything from the male line and she will get jewelry etc from the female line

I have no idea what happened to my father’s WW2 medals. I suspect that my mother threw them out, along with a lot of other stuff, when she had dementia. 🙁

I do have the official note to say he’d been ‘mentioned in dispatches’ though.

i see no point in these 'rules'. Each custodian of the medals should be free to leave them as they see fit, hopefully to the person they believe will most treasure them.

In my generation of the family i am the custodian of my granfathers, childless uncle and great-uncle's and my father's medals. On my demise they will go to DS who would like them and has children he can pass them on to. DD is quite happy with this.

Bequeathing medals can create more difficulties than you can imagine, as I am finding at the moment.

My mother received a post-humous medal for her war service. It belongs to the female line of the family...

The reason I gave my son my youngest child his Grandfathers medals was because he was researching his ancestors war records and asked me for any photographs or paperwork relating them. His sisters had never shown any interest. I think that the wife then eldest child and so on should inherit.

That's interesting, the rule of inheritance for medals.
I really don't think it matters which relative receives them, as long as it is someone who appreciates them and will look after them for future generations.
I say this as someone who sold my father's medals to Sotherby's decades ago, and now regrets this. One was a valuable Russian military medal with a red star. I was only early 20s and had no idea, nor any desire to keep it, until of course I now have children and grandchildren of my own.
(I'd probably have given them to a son, though, not a daughter!)