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agonyaunt2021-07-29 10:27 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2021-07-29 10:27 am
Entry tags:
Pay Dirt: Our Homophobe Parents Disowned My Brother. Do I Have To Split My Inheritance With Him?
[n.b. this is the one I couldn't help mentioning yesterday.]
He could use the money. But so could I.
My parents had three children: my sister, “Valerie,” then my brother, “Jack,” then I came along as a surprise when Valerie was 15 and Jack was 12. We all turned into very progressive liberals, which was a constant disappointment to our very conservative parents. Jack, whom they could never accept as bisexual, got the worst of it. They were fine as long as he dated women, but when he married a man, they cut him off and refused to even speak of him. Valerie and I have remained in close touch with Jack, his husband, and their adopted son.
Our parents both passed away a few weeks apart in 2020, and their estate is in the process of being settled. They cut Jack out entirely and left everything 50/50 to Valerie and me. Jack has not said a word about this. But Valerie, who is the executrix, has been putting increasing pressure on me to gift a third of my share to Jack. She plans to do the same, so that each of us would end up with a third of the estate. Jack and his husband get by financially, but his husband has chronic health problems and their son, who is now 14, has autism. While semi-high functioning, he is unlikely to be able to hold down a job that will fully support him.
I fully agree that it was wrong of our parents to cut Jack out because of who he is. But they did what they did, and giving up a large chunk of her inheritance is much easier for Valerie, who has both a high-paying career and a similarly high-earning husband, and has never wanted kids. My fiancé and I, on the other hand, also just get by, and we plan to have two or three kids ourselves. Valerie has flat-out told me that if I choose not to divide my share with Jack, I am lending my support to our parents’ bigotry and don’t deserve to call myself a progressive. Do you agree, or do I have a moral (in addition to a legal) right to keep my full inheritance?
—Undeserving?
Dear Undeserving,
I believe you have a legal right to keep all of the money, but I agree with your sister that you’re perpetuating your parents’ bigotry if you choose to go that route, which was pretty clearly a mechanism by which they intended to punish your brother for being bisexual. You and your sister are capable of rectifying that wrong, and the choice to do it—or not—is entirely yours. I think if this situation didn’t potentially benefit you or wasn’t about money, the morality of it would be clearer, and I doubt you would hesitate.
Also, consider your relationship with your brother. He may not say anything, but I think you’d be naïve to assume he doesn’t notice or mind. You know his financial situation is similar to yours, and unlike you, he already has a dependent to support. Consider what it says, not just about your progressivism, but your sense of overall fairness toward your brother if you decide to keep the entirety of the inheritance. Your bigoted parents probably wanted you to sever your relationship with your brother, and you are allowing them to posthumously create a situation that might facilitate it. Don’t let them succeed.
He could use the money. But so could I.
My parents had three children: my sister, “Valerie,” then my brother, “Jack,” then I came along as a surprise when Valerie was 15 and Jack was 12. We all turned into very progressive liberals, which was a constant disappointment to our very conservative parents. Jack, whom they could never accept as bisexual, got the worst of it. They were fine as long as he dated women, but when he married a man, they cut him off and refused to even speak of him. Valerie and I have remained in close touch with Jack, his husband, and their adopted son.
Our parents both passed away a few weeks apart in 2020, and their estate is in the process of being settled. They cut Jack out entirely and left everything 50/50 to Valerie and me. Jack has not said a word about this. But Valerie, who is the executrix, has been putting increasing pressure on me to gift a third of my share to Jack. She plans to do the same, so that each of us would end up with a third of the estate. Jack and his husband get by financially, but his husband has chronic health problems and their son, who is now 14, has autism. While semi-high functioning, he is unlikely to be able to hold down a job that will fully support him.
I fully agree that it was wrong of our parents to cut Jack out because of who he is. But they did what they did, and giving up a large chunk of her inheritance is much easier for Valerie, who has both a high-paying career and a similarly high-earning husband, and has never wanted kids. My fiancé and I, on the other hand, also just get by, and we plan to have two or three kids ourselves. Valerie has flat-out told me that if I choose not to divide my share with Jack, I am lending my support to our parents’ bigotry and don’t deserve to call myself a progressive. Do you agree, or do I have a moral (in addition to a legal) right to keep my full inheritance?
—Undeserving?
Dear Undeserving,
I believe you have a legal right to keep all of the money, but I agree with your sister that you’re perpetuating your parents’ bigotry if you choose to go that route, which was pretty clearly a mechanism by which they intended to punish your brother for being bisexual. You and your sister are capable of rectifying that wrong, and the choice to do it—or not—is entirely yours. I think if this situation didn’t potentially benefit you or wasn’t about money, the morality of it would be clearer, and I doubt you would hesitate.
Also, consider your relationship with your brother. He may not say anything, but I think you’d be naïve to assume he doesn’t notice or mind. You know his financial situation is similar to yours, and unlike you, he already has a dependent to support. Consider what it says, not just about your progressivism, but your sense of overall fairness toward your brother if you decide to keep the entirety of the inheritance. Your bigoted parents probably wanted you to sever your relationship with your brother, and you are allowing them to posthumously create a situation that might facilitate it. Don’t let them succeed.
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Put in the most LW-centric terms I can think of: LW, having two uncles and a cousin on good terms with your prospective children is worth more in terms of family resources (babysitting and other parenting breaks, networking, etc) than any amount of money. Also the dissonance between your soi-disant liberal politics and letting your parents pay you off to support their homophobic abandonment of your brother will probably trouble your allegedly progressive soul.
At least I hope it does.(I feel so bad for LW's brother I cannot even.)
(Also I side eye how LW discusses her nephew, even as I appreciate that she sees that he can use support, even as I cannot even believe she needs to ask whether she should contribute to that support.)
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The fact that he hasn't said anything makes him a Very Good Person who is waiting to see if you can pull your head out of your ass enough to do the right thing. And who will quietly back away forever should you not manage that trick.
(Full disclosure: Said as someone whose wife has absolutely been disinherited by her wealthy parents for being gay and whose sibling will clearly inherit everything and not even attempt to do the right thing at all, despite the Significant Amount of Money involved that would fucking change our lives if it came our way.)
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jesus fuck that sucks, I'm so sorry, and fuck your wife's parents and sibling.
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LW not only risks severing his relationship with their brother, they also risk severing their relationship with his sister too. They need to think very carefully about that if they decide to keep the money.
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dang LW that's a hell of an L to take
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Not all, no.
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You'll note that neither of those ends with your brother getting less!
LW you can't do anything about the fact that the three of you each have different money needs, but I do understand that it's tough to hear your sister talk about giving up money when that means something very different to each of you. And I know that an abstract sense of fairness is tough when it's your rent money or mortgage on the line. But you can't do anything about that; you can do something about your brother getting less money than you, and I hope you do.
Honestly though: before you do anything you and your sister should probably both talk to Jack together about the estate? It sounds like this might end up with you resenting Jack because of something your sister guilted you about, which I don't think either you or Jack would want. It could be Jack is staying quiet because he values his good relationships with you more than he cares about the money, or (given the age difference, and it sounds like you're still young enough that fifteen years is important) he might even honestly agree that you need the money more than he does, or he's still angry enough at the parents that he doesn't even want their money. It sounds like the three of you have a generally good relationship that sharing your real feelings about his being disinherited won't break anything more than the not talking about it is doing. Sit down and talk it out.
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I love your last paragraph assuming the best intentions from Jack and encouraging the best out of all of them to sit down and communicate. I want to live in the world you describe here.
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You'll note that neither of those ends with your brother getting less!
Yes, my take is that the siblings should add up their salaries - what all three of them earn in total, not including any income from a spouse/partner - and work out who earns what % of the total, and then allocate the estate to the people with the lowest % of the total earnings
so for example, if rich-sister earns 90% of the siblings total combined earnings, rich-sister should get 10% of the total inheritance.
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That kind of thing worked in my mom's family because nobody was orders-of-magnitude wealthier and also because everyone knew that if somebody ended up needing bailed out later they were all going to do it anyway so there was no point keeping score. But it requires people who are more interested in fairness and their family's well-being than in winning, and not every family's so lucky.
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So while I agree that the sharing should happen, the three of them ought to consult a tax attorney to ensure that they also share the potential tax consequences to each of them of doing so. Fair is indeed fair.
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As a queer person I would like to say this and only this to the LW and his shallow, shallow progressivism: At least you know stand with conservatives who hate you openly.
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I read LW as a cishet man.
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Ok? Ultimately the LW's gender is irrelevant.
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But this is hardly the first time we have discussed a LW’s gender identity and the assumptions that go into reading it.
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"hate you openly" refers to my preference for people like the LW's parents vs the LW themself.
When you are a queer person, you know where you stand with someone who, like the LW's parents, hates you openly.
It hurts much more when someone you think cares for you falls in line with bigotry because it's convenient, or in the LW's case, financially expedient.
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(And yes, LW is supporting their parents' bigotry if they opt to keep the money. The bigotry is the only reason the estate was 50/0/50 instead of 33/33/33.)
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eg PFLAG or The Trevor Project.
"The Trevor Project is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1998 focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. Through a toll-free telephone number, it operates The Trevor Lifeline, a confidential service that offers trained counselors. The stated goals of the project are to provide crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for the aforementioned youths (defined by the organization as people under 25), as well as to offer guidance and resources to parents and educators in order to foster safe, accepting, and inclusive environments for all youth, at home and at school."
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
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Even if the cutoff was mutual, I think it's unlikely Jack would not want the money. I think it's even less likely that Jack's husband would be ok with Jack turning away a sizeable inheritance that could make a significant difference in their material lives on principle.
Basis: In the Jack's place, or his husband's place, I would be furious if the estate composed of people who allegedly loved me deeply decided to honor the homophobic dead person's wishes and not write me back into the will specifically out of their own desire, as with the LW, to get more money for themselves.
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Also bi bro may be more sensitive to the economic difference between big sis and LW and advocate for LW, which is another reason to involve bro in this. LW is lots younger and it’s how our capitalist system sets things up to disadvantage the young to rope them into the system that we won’t call an indenture, but it is.
As economic fairness goes, sis may have had advantage of the parental resources to set her up for many years, that LW may be lacking in as much as disinherited bro, depending on how long ago the shunning occurred. I think asking big sis to gift a bigger share than LW to make bi bro’s share an even third would be fairest since she needs less than either bro or LW.
But there is a spectrum between LW gifting the same amount as wealthier big sis and LW gifting nothing at all that LW may be too young and inexperienced to think of or know how to negotiate. I’m not willing to write off LW as a selfish little hypocritical homophobe when they may be dealing with other inequalities being poorer and younger than big sis who may also have a history of abusive control over LW--I’m just guessing, but I see the possibility in what LW has related here of the dynamic between them and the fact she isn’t factoring in the economic and resource difference between her and LW. I wish the adviser brought up that there are more options than either/or here for LW to consider, just as there is always more than one kind of oppression to consider here.
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You have a really good point -- there are many more options than 1/3 or nothing, and if Big Sis has more she could have offered to give more.
I also do hope the siblings can come together, defy their awful parents, and do what's best for all three of them, especially the two with less in the way of resources.
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